Election Lessons

Aleksandar Krzalovski

Sunday’s inauguration of Stevo Pendarovski marked the end of the presidential elections. The drama of the uncertain result in the first round did not reflect in the second round, where after the first half of the count, it was clear how it was going to end. The drama was left only for the upcoming football matches on Sunday. Probably everything has already been said and written in relation to these elections, so the only thing I can do is summarize and end this topic.

Some fans of conspiracy theories (or people who know more about the political developments than me) would say – “everything was as it should be.” And the behavior of most (or literally all) participants in the elections is in their favor. After the first round, the Alliance and Besa “declared victory in the Albanian bloc” with almost 80,000 votes of the candidate supported by them, Blerim Reka. Given that he (as expected) did not make it in the second round, they did not put much effort in the second round (except that they did not miss the opportunity to point out their contribution to Pendarovski’s victory), which, in turn, left room for DUI to declare itself as a key factor in the outcome of these elections and the “weight on the scale”, due to which the result was in favor of Pendarovski.

VMRO-DPMNE also declared victory in the first round (even though it lost), and kept similar rhetoric after the second election round (that it was a party/coalition with the highest number of votes won in these elections). In addition, they renounced seriously challenging the election process (although the opposition party made such announcements in its first statements after the end of the second round), with which, according to the conspirators, the party played its role in this process and legitimized the new president, and indirectly with it, legitimized everything that the political option propagated, especially the Prespa Agreement and the constitutional changes, including the name change.

Finally, after a certain shock or knockdown during the first round, both SDSM and its presidential candidate Stevo Pendarovski were relieved, and they rightfully declared victory in the presidential elections.

An interesting Facebook status even thanked the boycotters for their contribution to this result… because if only 10 thousand of them came out to vote or made their ballots invalid, the winning candidate would not have had the majority of votes.
And so, at the end of this election story, all will continue living their happy and cheerful lives… if not for the rest of their lives, at least until the next elections. Unfortunately, as usual, the parties will quickly forget about the meaning of the votes in these elections (given and not given), and since “this battle is over”, the daily quarrels with party statements and political politics will continue as before. Probably the overrated “sweep” between the two election rounds will stay in the cupboard and I agree with those who have already declared it as expired. I would only add that it is not the biggest problem WHO didn’t finish things, but the fact that many things that should have been done were not done… so a change (or as it is more expected, just a shift) of staffing would hardly lead to the desired effects any time soon.

And of course there is something that the parties need to think long and hard of, and in the next part of this column I will try to summarize the main issues that emerged from these elections, including a section that has already been debated (or locked) in other articles and statuses in social media.

Low turnout. Although turnout in the second round was higher for about five percentage points (46.7 percent versus 41.7 percent in the first round), it is significantly lower than all previous elections (in presidential elections, it has always been over 48 percent, and most often over 50 percent, while in general elections it is usually over 60%). In comparison, even though the previous general elections in December 2016 were considered disputable, the turnout was almost 67 percent (or exactly 1,191,864 voters), or about 350,000 voters more than in the second round of these elections, and that is an astonishing number of 440,000 more than first round!

To me, the citizens confirm this as a result of the generally low confidence in the parties (20-25% in the polls) and express a clear dissatisfaction with the way in which the country’s politics and the parties operate. It seems that it is high time for a thorough reform of the parties, starting with their statutes, which will disable “sultan” government, through renewal to internal party democracy and debates on strategies and important issues for the country, to capacity-based personnel policy (meritorious) and developing future ministers within the party (as employees).

The Albanians decided the elections. No matter much one says that votes should  not be divided according to ethnicity (by the way, those who most often said this publicly asked before the second round – to whom will Albanians give their votes), or that this claim is manipulated (it is an argument that about 120 thousand votes of ethnic Albanians are not decisive, when more than 300,000 ethnic Macedonians have voted for the same candidate), it is still clear that the difference lies here – in the determination of 90 percent of that voting body to give their votes to presidential candidate Pendarovski. There is still a mystery (at least for me) and a debatable issue, how many of those votes in the second round are the contribution of DUI, and how many of the other parties (including SDSM).

Confirmation of the Prespa Agreement. Yes, but…! If the presidential race was mainly about the most important difference – the views of the two main candidates concerning the Prespa Agreement, then yes – the result shows the majority’s support of the agreement. However, it is also clear that the agreement does not have the majority support of the majority community – the ethnic Macedonians. In these elections, neither the result “for” of the referendum (even with much higher turnout) was confirmed, nor did those (1.2 million), who didn’t come out to vote in the referendum, come out in a sufficient number to contest the agreement. Therefore, for me, the message of this outcome is: yes, the agreement is here to stay, but it needs to be very carefully implemented, by acknowledging the suggestions from the expert public and the opposition, for all further details in the following agreements (historical aspects, marking monuments, naming the institutions and applying the adjective “Macedonian”, trademarks, etc.). Because, as you know, having a frustrated majority is much worse than having a frustrated minority.

Consensus… a long way to go. I have repeatedly pointed out that the use of the term “consensual candidate” is misleading, since consensus foresees approval from all (or, to a lesser extent, all relevant) actors (parties) for a solution (and that of course includes the largest opposition parties – as Greeks did with their red lines in the name dispute). In this case, we only had a common candidate of two parties, not a consensual. Additionally, I agree with one commentary that argues that the concept of consensus “did not pass” (in ethnic terms), because in the first round, the common candidate lost the votes of Albanians, and in the second round – the votes of Macedonians.

I would add that, in fact, there can be no consensus in direct elections (except theoretically – all important parties will agree on one candidate, which would not make sense for such elections), so it is time to seriously reconsider the need for direct elections for head of state. It would also be an adjustment to reality to reduce the credentials of the country’s president, and for he/she to be elected by the MPs in Parliament, with a two-thirds majority, which in turn leads to the need for consensus of all important parties, and then we can talk about a consensual president!

Good polls. This time again there were no criticizer and cynical comments about the accuracy of the polls, but the facts say that this time were fairly precise, and with minimal exceptions, it turned out that all forecasts are within the margin of statistical error. The most relevant agencies, M-Prospect, IPIS and Rating, once again confirmed their credibility, all predicting the uncertain race, but also Pendarovski’s victory with less advantage in the first round, and more votes in the second round. M-Prospect also had fairly good estimates for the voter turnout, taking into account a control question of the likelihood of turnout (and not just asking the respondents if they would come out and vote in the elections).

Of course, there were other lessons as well, and in the end I would repeat once again the conclusion about the still deep polarization in society and among the leading parties. As President Pendarovski himself said during the inauguration, it is one of the main problems and his priority challenge. I hope that he work thoroughly on this task, and I believe that his roots from Galichnik (and the centuries-old experiences of respect, tolerance, patience, wisdom) will be an asset in dealing with delicate issues and situations.