{"id":39254,"date":"2019-05-06T01:22:05","date_gmt":"2019-05-06T01:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39254"},"modified":"2019-05-06T01:22:05","modified_gmt":"2019-05-06T01:22:05","slug":"stevo-pendarovski-wins-north-macedonias-presidential-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39254","title":{"rendered":"Stevo Pendarovski wins North Macedonia’s presidential election"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Stevo Pendarovski, supported by the ruling Social\u00a0<\/span>Democrats (SDSM), has won the North Macedonian presidency in a run-off\u00a0<\/span>vote.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 56-year-old garnered 51.66 percent of the vote on Sunday, beating nationalist VMRO’s Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova with 44.73 percent. The remaining 3.61 percent of the votes were void.<\/p>\n

Sunday’s run-off poll was called after neither candidate received enough ballots for an outright win in the first round of voting two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

The victory puts more wind into the sails of the ruling coalition, which expects to get a date to start EU accession talks in June and become the 30th NATO member state next year.<\/p>\n

“The victory of this concept brings a future for the republic of North Macedonia and it’s our ticket to Europe,” Pendarovski told reporters after the election results were announced.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Zoran Zaev congratulated Pendarovski and said: “As of today, no one can stand in the way of progress. We showed we are ready for Europe.”<\/p>\n

The campaign for the elections was dominated by divisions over a change to the country’s name that was agreed to mollify Greece and open the way for EU and NATO membership.<\/p>\n

Greece had, for decades, demanded that the ex-Yugoslav republic change its name from Macedonia, arguing that it implied a territorial claim on a northern Greek province also called Macedonia.<\/p>\n

The new name was formally ratified earlier this year. But the accord continues to divide North Macedonians and has eclipsed all other campaign issues.<\/p>\n

In contrast to Pendarovski, Siljanovska-Davkova, a university professor, opposes the name change, although she is also pro-European Union. She has accused the government of dragging its feet on economic reforms.<\/p>\n

VMRO-DPMNE accused the government of “engineering election”, adding it had information of the ruling coalition bribing voters and threatening them, among other things.<\/p>\n

The president holds a largely ceremonial post in North Macedonia but he or she is the supreme commander of the armed forces and also signs off on parliamentary legislation.<\/p>\n

The refusal of outgoing President Gjorge Ivanov, a nationalist, to sign some bills backed by parliament has delayed the implementation of key laws, including one on wider use of the Albanian language.<\/p>\n

But Ivanov had no authority to block the constitutional amendments passed earlier this year by a two-thirds majority of parliament that enabled the name change to North Macedonia.<\/p>\n

Turnout on Sunday was 46.6 percent, above the 40 percent threshold needed for the election result to be valid but still low, which analysts attributed to voters’ disappointment with a pace of reforms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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North Macedonia, Greece boost economic ties after dispute<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stevo Pendarovski, supported by the ruling Social\u00a0Democrats (SDSM), has won the North Macedonian presidency in a run-off\u00a0vote. The 56-year-old garnered 51.66 percent of the vote on Sunday, beating nationalist VMRO’s Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova with 44.73 percent. The remaining 3.61 percent of the votes were void. Sunday’s run-off poll was called after neither candidate received enough ballots…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":39255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}