Thewesternbalkans
The campaign for the upcoming parliamentary elections in the Republic of North Macedonia began on April 18. The elections will be held simultaneously with the presidential election runoff on May 8.
In the next 20 days, 17 parties will present their ideologies, ambitions and aspirations to the voters. In the election race, the big parties traditionally enter into pre-election coalitions with several smaller parties.
The “Your Macedonia” coalition is led by VMRO-DPMNE, which includes a total of 21 parties. On the other side, their political opponent SDSM is at the head of the “European Future” coalition which includes 14 parties.
In the Albanian political bloc, DUI lead the “European Front” coalition consisting of four parties, while the Alliance for Albanians is in the “VLEN” coalition consisting of a total of five parties.
The representatives of 10 of the 17 parties and coalitions that will take part in the parliamentary elections signed a Code for the Conduct of Fair and Democratic Elections. Representatives of two political parties, GROM and Democrats, refused to sign it. According to statements put out by GROM leader Stevco Jakimovski and Democrats leader Jorgo Ognenovski, the reasons behind the decision are the financing of political parties’ campaigns, which favours the largest parties, and the fact that since the campaign for the parliamentary and presidential elections run simultaneously, the leaders of parties that nominated presidential candidates participate in the presidential campaign, which began on April 4.
Comment: For the first time, the campaign for the parliamentary elections in North Macedonia will take place in parallel with the campaign for the presidential elections, which began on April 4, and should end on April 22 with the onset of the 48-hour silence. Thus, during the silence for the presidential elections, the parliamentary campaign will continue.
Two more political parties will participate in these parliamentary elections, unlike the previous elections in 2020, when a total of 15 participated.
The analysis of parliamentary elections in the country shows that usually before all elections, new small parties appear, which is good for democracy, but often these are satellite parties of some big political players who want to take additional votes from their opponents.
