SKOPJE (Reuters) – North Macedonian presidential candidate Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova held a big lead over incumbent Stevo Pendarovski with votes counted from 99.03% of polling stations on Thursday, but both were short of the 50% backing needed to win outright.
Siljanovska-Davkova of the rightist VMRO-DPMNE had 40.08% of votes while pro-European Pendarovski, who has the support of the Social Democratic party, stood at 19.93%, the State Election Commission said.
A runoff between the two leading candidates will be held on May 8, together with the parliamentary election.
The vote for the largely ceremonial presidency was widely seen as a litmus test for the parliamentary election, in which VMRO-DPMNE is seeking to unseat the ruling pro-European and centre-left Social Democrats.
“This is incredibly inspirational for me, … this is the end of the first round, the second round is approaching,” Siljanovska-Davkova, 70, a jurist and a university professor told her jubilant supporters on Wednesday night in Skopje.
VMRO-DPMNE has gained ground in recent years over public anger at the slow pace of the Balkan country’s accession to the European Union, corruption and slow development.
“We made mistakes and the people said what they had about that,” Dimitar Kovacevski, the leader of Social Democrats, told his supporters on Wednesday in Skopje.
Bujar Osmani, a candidate for the ethnic Albanian DUI party, was running in third place on 13.36%.
“The party that wins in the first round will find it easier to mobilise voters in the second round and in the parliamentary vote,” political analyst Petar Arsovski said.
North Macedonia’s candidacy to join the EU was met with optimism in 2005. However, 19 years later, it has made little progress, in part because of opposition from EU members Greece and Bulgaria.
Pendarovski, 61, described his election result as a defeat for pro-European forces but said he would keep campaigning for the May 8 runoff.
A 2017 agreement to change the country’s name from Macedonia to North Macedonia ended its dispute with Greece, but Bulgaria lodged a veto in 2020 over history and language issues, which many North Macedonians say challenges their national identity.
In 2001, the Western NATO alliance pulled North Macedonia back from the brink of civil war during an ethnic Albanian insurgency, and the country was promised faster integration into both the EU and NATO. It joined NATO in 2020.
(Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic and Fatos Bytyci; Editing by Gerry Doyle)
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