DUI is down one seat in Parliament as result of the repeated voting in two electoral districts. The party managed to save another of its seats that was under challenge, in the 5th electoral district, where oil tycoon Ismail Jahoski is confirmed as member of the next Parliament.

DUI lost a seat as the result of repeated voting in Zelino, near Tetovo. The results in this polling station were challenged by the opposition VLEN coalition. Given the small margin between DUI and VLEN, VLEN challenged the vote in a village where it has a strong voting base, and was able to turn out a larger number of voters, enough to push out the DUI candidate. With this, VLEN will have 14 seats in Parliament, and DUI is down to 18 – a number that is likely to go down more as coalition partners are announcing they will leave DUI if it is left out of the next Government.

Both VMRO-DPMNE and SDSM were hoping to win a seat from DUI in the 5th district, and remove the scandal plagued Jahoski from the Parliament. SDSM were closer to winning the seat that VMRO was, and both parties asked for repeated voting in 6 polling stations, where various irregularities were reported. Voting was held in two stations in Krusevo, two in the village of Dolneni, which is Jahoski’s powerbase, one in Ohrid and one in Struga. VMRO won heavily in one of the Krusevo polling stations, in Ohrid and in Struga, but not by enough to negate DUI’s votes.

This means that the coalitions led by DUI and SDSM are tied for 2nd place in the Parliament – both with 18 seats each. Both coalitions are expected to lose representatives that were elected by the smaller coalition partners, as these currently ruling parties are going to be in the opposition. The second largest party in Parliament gets to appoint the head of the State Electoral Commission, and a few other officials, and it is likely that both SDSM and DUI will claim the privilege of being the largest opposition party.