After the exceptionally low ethnic Albanian turnout in the first round of the presidential elections, DUI official Izet Mexhiti, who runs the presidential campaign for this party, promised that he will deliver 80.000 votes for SDSM candidate Stevo Pendarovski in the second round.

This is the same number of votes won by Blerim Reka, candidate for the two opposition ethnic Albanian parties, AA and BESA, in the first round. DUI’s legitimacy to present itself as the leading Albanian party in Macedonia has been badly hurt after the good showing for Reka and the disastrous one for SDSM and DUI in the first round who lost about 2/5 of the votes they won in the 2017 municipal elections. The dismal showing also sparked an open confrontation between DUI and the Albanian wing of its coalition partner SDSM.

We visited all our local electoral offices between the two rounds, and we call on the citizens to massively come out in the second round. We decide between the white and the black, future and past, East and West. Staying at home on May 5th endangers our NATO membership, endangers our EU accession talks, endangers our ties with Washington and Brussels, said Mexhiti.

He also sought to dispel the notion that DUI is secretly working for a boycott, expecting that in this case its official Talat Xhaferi would be able to function as President.