site.btaNorth Macedonia's Parliamentary Election Campaign Begins

The campaign for the upcoming parliamentary elections in the Republic of North Macedonia began on Thursday. The elections will be held simultaneously with the presidential election runoff on May 8. 

On Wednesday, representatives of 10 of the 17 parties and coalitions that will take part in the parliamentary elections signed a Code for the Conduct of Fair and Democratic Elections. Representatives of two political parties, GROM and Democrats, refused to sign it. According to statements put out by GROM leader Stevco Jakimovski and Democrats leader Jorgo Ognenovski, the reasons behind the decision are the financing of political parties' campaigns, which favours the largest parties, and the fact that since the campaign for the parliamentary and presidential elections run simultaneously, the leaders of parties that nominated presidential candidates participate in the presidential campaign, which began on April 4.

On April 12, the State Election Commission determined the order of the candidate lists for the parliamentary elections. According to its previous decision, the parties and coalitions with candidates for head of state will appear on the ballot for the presidential elections in the same order as on the ballot for the parliamentary elections. Thus, first on the ballot will be the SDSM-led Coalition for European Future, followed by the VMRO-DPMNE-led Your Macedonia coalition, the GROM-led Brave for Macedonia coalition, the European Front coalition led by the largest Albanian party, Democratic Union for Integration, the Left, the coalition of the Albanian opposition parties called VLEN (Worth), the ZNAM (I Know) Movement, the United Macedonia coalition, Skopje Mayor Danela Arsovska's New Alternative, Avaya, European Citizens' Movement, Macedonian Era Third Sovereignty, Your Party, Rodina Makedonija, Desna (Right), Democrats, and the Workers' Party.

Due to the overlapping of the election campaigns, the parliamentary election campaign will not be suspended during the days of reflection for the presidential elections.

In general elections, North Macedonia is divided into six constituencies, with 20 MPs elected from each. The distribution of seats is based on the D'Hondt method.