Historic first Presidential vote in North Macedonia tainted by fears of low turnout
8611 Min Read
Voters in North Macedonia on Sunday will vote to elect a new president in the country’s first election since it changed its name.
The vote for the largely ceremonial post comes less than three months after a deal with Greece on Skopje’s name change came into force, ending a decades-long identity dispute between the neighbours.
The candidates are Stevo Pendarovski, who is backed by the ruling leftwing administration; Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova of the rightwing opposition; and Belrim Reka, from the country’s ethnic Albanian minority.
Gjorge Ivanov, the outgoing nationalist president, cannot run again, having served the maximum permitted two terms.
The presidential vote needs more than 40 percent turnout to get a decisive result. But many voters are disillusioned with what they see as a corrupt political system and some observers say the vote could fail to attract the requisite numbers.
A consultative referendum approved changing the name of the country to North Macedonia last September, but the result was undermined by the fact that it failed to get 40 percent of voters to turn out.
Since it was only consultative, the government and parliament were free to go ahead with the historic name change to settle a decades-old dispute with neighbouring Greece, which means its neighbour will no longer stand in the way of their EU or NATO membership applications.
