The head of the State Electoral Commission Oliver Derkoski insisted that the election results the SEC eventually published on Thursday evening are authentic.

Wednesday’s early general election saw chaos ensue over the vote counting process, as the SEC website crashed due to an alleged hacking attack and all parties came out with their own, very different results. Additionally, there were numerous reports of illogical outcomes, such as Albanian parties winning in exclusively Macedonian parts of the country – reports which Derkoski labeled as “fake news”.

The Commission will examine all objections but I stand by what we reported as the unofficial, preliminary result yesterday evening, Derkoski said.

The SEC projected the main parties to be nearly tied – with the SDSM – BESA coalition winning 46 seats and VMRO-DPMNE winning 44, leaving no party with a clear shot at forming a government. VMRO demands a manual recount of the votes, given the grave doubts in the public about the entire process.