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Foreign Christian missionaries were expected to closely monitor the ballot, amid fears of renewed ethnic and religious tensions between the predominantly Christian majority and the mainly Muslim ethnic Albanian minority. They said in comments monitored by BosNewsLife that ethnic and religious tensions make it difficult for especially evangelical Christians in Macedonia, who they claim are often regarded as followers of a sect.
Stability in the government and tackling religious tensions is seen by observers as crucial for the country’s future. While Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s Conservative party (VMRO-DPMNE) won a decisive victory over the Social Democrats, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said its monitoring mission found "organized attempts to violently disrupt the electoral process in parts of the ethnic Albanian areas."
The OSCE also cited what it said were "numerous serious irregularities," including intimidation, stuffing of ballot boxes and tampering with the results.
PERSON KILLED
One person was killed, and at least eight others were wounded in election related violence.
The 37-year-old Gruevski pledged to repeat voting in 22 precincts that were shut down because of violence during Sunday’s election.
A spokeswoman for the European Commission, Krisztina Nagy, told reporters that the EU’s enlargement commissioner expressed his concerns about the violence in a conversation with Macedonia’s prime minister.
"Prime Minister Gruevski has given his commitment that the elections will be re-run in those
polling stations where violence and disorder occurred," she said. "We call for a peaceful and orderly conduct of the voting during the re-runs."
The European Commission expressed concerns the election violence could affect Macedonia’s
efforts to join the European Union and other Western institutions. "The Commission has defined eight specific benchmarks in March that have to be fulfilled by the country in order to allow the Commission to allow the accession negotiations with the European Union," Nagy recalled. "And the Commission has also very clearly stated during the past weeks that the organization of free and fair elections is an essential element of the political criteria," she added.
Macedonia’s government scheduled early elections after Greece blocked its efforts to win an
invitation to join NATO during a summit of alliance leaders in Romania in April. (Parts of this BosNewsLife News story also airs on the Voice of America (VOA) network via www.voanews.com. BosNewsLife NEWS WATCH is a regular look at news developments impacting the Church and/or compassionate proffesionals.)
