After the total disarray during the vote counting process, political parties are announcing they will file complaints to the State Electoral Commission. Opposition leader Hristijan Mickoski said that the legal team in his VMRO-DPMNE party is preparing their list of objections to the process. The ruling SDSM party is also expected to object – they insist that they should have at least one seat more.

The official projection, published a day late because of an alleged hacking attack on the SEC, has SDSM up by two seats over VMRO, due to their coalition with the BESA party that will hold four seats. VMRO said that there were numerous irregularities, including bribery of voters in the poor neighborhoods across the country, on the part of the ruling coalition. Therefore, VMRO called for a manual recount.

The Alliance of Albanians is also outspoken in its criticism of the electoral process. They accused their direct rival, Ali Ahmeti’s DUI party, of intimidation and ballot stuffing.

There was ballot stuffing in Saraj, chain voting in Lipkovo, brutal ballot stuffing in Zajas, Plasnica and around Kicevo, even in ethnic Macedonian areas where the results somehow end up in favor of DUI. We call on the SEC and the OSCE/ODIHR mission to help examine the electoral process, said Ziadin Sela, leader of the Alliance of Albanians.

The leftist Levica party, which won two seats, also said that they were cheated out of three more seats, in the 1st, 2nd and 4th electoral district, where they were close to passing the threshold. Levica leader Dimitar Apasiev said that SDSM is now trying to snatch one of the two seats the party won and claim it for themselves.