The Electoral Code will change due to the SEC

After voting in the Parliament for the confidence of the Government, the government and the opposition will implement the agreement reached between Prime Minister Zoran Zaev and VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski for a new composition of the State Election Commission. It will be the first test for the reform package, which brings opposition MPs back to parliament, although the change in the election of SEC members was not on Reinhard Priebe’s list, but an independent decision by political leaders in the country. According to the information, it is a request by VMRO-DPMNE, which SDSM accepted only to satisfy the opposition and to force it to return to the Parliament in order to pass the reform laws, which require a two-thirds majority.

Accordingly, amendments to the Electoral Code should now be adopted in order to change the SEC concept. The model that was agreed during the negotiations in Przino, when there were three members of the SEC from the expert circles and the largest ruling and opposition parties, will no longer be valid. In contrast, it will go to the SEC to function as an administrative body, headed by the Secretary General proposed by the opposition. The composition of the SEC, to be elected also in an announcement, will meet six months before the regular elections and will be in session until the end of the election cycle. The goal is to stop the practice so far from taking large salaries, and not doing anything when there are no elections, but now there will be a new problem because there will be no interest as it was before working in the SEC, and the parties will have the problem of offering quality candidates.

The State Election Commission has been ‘beheaded’ since December last year. In particular, the SEC has for one month only one member (one from Besa), while the other eight have resigned because of the scandal with high bonuses for the last election cycles. At the moment, technically there is no one to organize and carry out any early parliamentary elections, or referendum on the name if a decision with Greece is reached, but also seemingly banal affairs, as resignation of an MP.

Immediately after Mickoski’s arrival as president of VMRO-DPMNE, meetings with the main political opponent Zoran Zaev became more frequent, and on one of them they agreed that the Przino model should go down in history. The prime minister then announced that the new election code will be ready by September, according to which the State Election Commission will be run by professionals, and party personnel will be included in the election for six months. Mickoski, meanwhile, said the completion of the SEC would be done according to the old model.

“The SEC president will be from the opposition, while the majority of the members will be from the coalition in power,” said the opposition leader.
In February, MP Antonio Milososki asked the Parliament to publish an announcement for the election of president, vice president and six SEC members, but it was repeatedly removed from the agenda.

“At the moment, the situation with the SEC is illegal and the responsibility is on the parliamentary majority, which is more important than the Government. You will witness that this item is placed at the bottom of the agenda because of two coalition political parties. Who insists that the SEC should not be staffed, we will know in the order of the events that will follow,” Milososki responded.

The work of the SEC was seriously criticized in all OSCE reports, primarily because of lack of transparency, but also because of poor organization. In December last year, US Ambassador to Skopje Jess Baily publicly called on members of the SEC that they voted an additional salary for four additional months for their work in the October elections. They have previously received additional wages for five months after the 2016 elections. After the outbreak of the scandal, eight out of nine members of the SEC, headed by President Aleksandar Cicakovski, resigned.