Prominent actor and VMRO-DPMNE official Toni Mihajlovski raised the question of the September 2018 referendum results, which are seen in a new light after the outcome of the first round of presidential elections yesterday.
A little over 609.000 people voted in favor of renaming Macedonia into North Macedonia at the referendum. Turnout was 36 percent – far short of the 50 percent required to declare the election valid – but the Zoran Zaev Government went ahead with renaming Macedonia anyway. The referendum was supported by the ruling SDSM and DUI parties, both of which nominated Stevo Pendarovski for President, as well as a long list of smaller parties and movements, most of whom are also behind Pendarovski.
Under strong international and judicial pressure, VMRO-DPMNE did not call for an outright boycott of the referendum but its leader and most of the main officials stayed out of the polls then. Yesterday, VMRO stood behind Gordana Sijanovska – Davkova – a centrist international law professor and a critic of the renaming process – for President.
Both Pendarovski and Siljanovska won around 320.000 votes. This, Mihajlovski says, raises the question – if the SDSM – DUI coalition can only muster 320.000 votes, where did the nearly additional 300.000 votes in the “yes” camp for the 2018 referendum come from?
The third presidential candidate Blerim Reka won 80.000 mainly ethnic Albanian votes, many of whom, presumably, supported the name change at the 2018 referendum. The name change was overwhelmingly supported by ethnic Albanians, just as it was rejected by ethnic Macedonians by a large majority. Still, this group of voters, as well as the SDSM supporters who became disenchanted between 2018 and 2019, are not enough to make up the number.
Instead, Mihajlovski points out to the rampant voter electoral fraud that is suspected to have occured in the last hours of the 2018 referendum. Throughout the day turnout was dismal across Macedonia, including in Albanian parts of the country, which suffer from high emigration levels. But then, the permanent declaration of turnout was halted with half an hour to go, and when the results were finally revealed, it turned out that in many Albanian villages turnout went from lows of 15-20 percent in the early afternoon, to over 80 or even 90 percent in the last hour of voting.
It is now clear that at least 300.000 phantom ballots were stuffed at the referendum. The truth always comes out :), Mihajlovski commented.
According to official electoral commission data, polling stations in majority Albanian districts would register hundreds of voters in the last half an hour. In one of them, 331 people officially voted in half an hour – which requires a stream of people each of whom votes, on average, in 5.4 seconds to be maintained for half an hour. In the village of Velesta, average voting speeds reached one voter per 9 seconds, if official data is to be believed. In Saraj, near Skopje, 360 people allegedly voted in two hours, or one each 20 seconds.
The SDSM – DUI led Government, and the state prosecutors under its control, refused to prosecute the obvious electoral fraud during the referendum. This left lingering concerns about its ability to hold elections.
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