by Zlatko Dimitrioski

1. POINT CONFERENCE
Elections in the Region – Serbia, Macedonia
26 May, 2017

2. CONTEXT

3. • 2006 - VMRO-DPMNE comes into power.
In the meantime wins 3 additional early
parliamentary elections in 2008, 2011 and
2014.
• February 2015 - SDSM started releasing
wire-taped conversations of public officials.
Allegations of: unlawful influence of the
executive upon the Parliament and the
judiciary, close connections of
government’s officials with pro-
governmental media, staged trial and
vengeful acts against political opponents,
election fraud, corruption, abuse of power
and authority, conflict of interest, blackmail,
extortion, nepotism and cronyism
(employing political party-cadres in the

4. • April 2015: “Taking into consideration that
our dictatorship is enveloped in a
democratic shell and enjoys the support
from its membership, it is much stronger
and more difficult to be overthrown than
any other dictatorship”
• June 2015 - Przino Agreement for
overcoming the crisis, elections are being
scheduled for 24 April 2016
• 2016 - Two postponements of the elections
– first for 5 June, and then for 11
December, when they actually took place.
• November 2016 - European Commission
published its report for Macedonia which
finally acknowledged the state capture in

5. HOW THE ELECTIONS WENT?

6. • Pressures on public sector employees to
attend party rallies or to vote for the ruling
party continued;
• Misuse of public resources;
• Unlawful administering of budget funds, i.e.
promotion of commencement of
construction or commencement of use of
public facilities;
• Probably illegal financing of the election
campaign;
• In a nutshell, using all legal and not-so-
legal means to suppress the opposition
and win the elections

7. • Election results: VMRO-DPMNE 51 MPs,
SDSM 49 MPs (Parliament consisted of
120 MPs);
• 568 votes more for SDSM and there could
have been opposite results

8. POST-ELECTION CONTEXT

9. • VMRO-DPMNE organizes protests in front
of the State Election Commission (these
guys definitely do not want to lose);
• VMRO-DPMNE receives the mandate but
does not succeed to form government;
• The President does not give the mandate
to SDSM – asks for additional guarantees;
• 4 months of filibuster of the constitutive
session, therefore not allowing the transfer
of power;
• 27 April 2017 – the parliamentary majority
appoints new speaker – protesters in front
of the Parliament – 7 MPs from VMRO-
DPMNE open the central door of the
Parliament building – attackers know
exactly where they have to go.

12. • The attack is not condemned by VMRO-
DPMNE: “SDSM should apologize to the
citizens whose revolt they intentionally
provoked”
• Even though some of the attackers were
former convicts, they got only probationary
sentences for taking part in a mob which
committed a criminal offence.
• EC report again: “The country suffers from
a divisive political culture and a lack of
capacity for compromise”.

13. • In the minds of VMRO-DPMNE members
and supporters, there was no attack of the
Parliament. On the contrary, “the people”
defended the Parliament from coup d'état.
• “The party intellectual knows that he is
playing tricks with reality; but he also
satisfies himself that reality is not violated.
[…] The essential act of the party is to use
conscious deception while retaining the
firmness of purpose that goes with
complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies
while genuinely believing in them, to forget
any fact that has become inconvenient,
and then, when it becomes necessary
again, to draw it back from oblivion for just
so long as it is needed, to deny the
existence of objective reality and all the
while to take account of the reality which
one denies—all this is indispensably

14. THANK YOU!