Stevo Pendarovski acknowledged defeat in the presidential elections. The outgoing President congratulated to his opponent Gordana Siljanovska – Davkova, who he attacked brutally until the last day, and condemned the boycott attempt which he believes cost him a lot of votes.

The results are clear. I have no intention of elaborating them further. In accordance with the results, I would like to congratulate to the winner, and to wish her successful work in the next five years. Unfortunately, my concept of a multi-ethnic Macedonia fully integrated in the Euro-Atlantic structures did not win the majority support today. I remain deeply convinced that this is the only way for Macedonia to be democratic and prosperous. So my conscience is clear. I am not sure if I can say the same for those who did not allow the citizens to pick up the second ballot and to vote in the presidential elections, Pendarovski said.

The DUI party tried to boycott the presidential elections, and this move likely cost Pendarovski over 60,000 votes – still far short from what he needed to beat Siljanovska, who is likely to end up beating him by over 200,000 votes. But it is clear that the outgoing President will use the failed DUI boycott as an excuse for his defeat. Pendarovski was hoping to win the unified Albanian vote, as his only chance to make up the huge margin Siljanovska enjoys among ethnic Macedonians, but from the results so far it is clear that Siljanovska won a large share of the Albanian voters who turned out, indicating that the VLEN coalition voters, who did not boycott, turned out for her. Because of the boycott, it may end up that Siljanovska beats Pendarovski even among the Albanian voters, let alone the ethnic Macedonians.

During the press conference, Pendarovski said that he knew SDSM is down from the peak it reached 5 or 10 years ago, but that he believed his personal ranking among the voters to be better than that of the party. “That gave me hope that I can be an even competitor. But, what happened today deprived me of that chance, hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens were prevented from having the second ballot”, said Pendarovski, alluding to the DUI boycott, but hugely inflating he number of DUI supporters who boycotted the election.