The President of the Republic of North Macedonia, Stevo Pendarovski, at today’s Elections Reforms Conference: Macedonian Elections Perspectives, in his address before the participants highlighted that it is particularly important to discuss such an issue as the elections, but also that democracy is much more than elections.
Premature, too frequent and reforms for which there is no consent from the opposition are worse that keeping the existing model. One thing is sure, there is no single model for better functioning of the democratic political system, said President Stevo Pendarovski at the opening of the Conference.
“Real democracy is not possible without free elections, they are its beginning without which it is impossible, a key legitimacy. We have various experiences with the election processes. The first and second ones, with their electoral model, enabled greater competitiveness. Critics of the existing model consider that its effects are in the greater centralization, little room for intra-party decision-making, clientalism. Though, low level of political culture cannot be brought down to the electoral model alone. We were also able to see that even with a relatively peaceful election day there can still be massive manipulations with the citizens’ will”, said Pendarovski.
