Shootings that led to at least one death and allegations of ballot fraud forced election officials to suspend voting in at least 17 polling stations yesterday, marring the start of Macedonia’s early parliamentary election.
The election could prove crucial to the Balkan country’s hopes to join NATO and the EU. But even before the polls opened, the campaign was tainted by violence among rival ethnic Albanian parties and claims of fraud, with international monitors recording more than a dozen pre-election attacks.
The most serious election day violence began within hours of polls opening in the former ethnic Albanian rebel stronghold of Aracinovo, a village near Skopje, where two separate shootings left one person dead and three wounded.
PHOTO: AFP
Ermira Mehmeti, spokeswoman for the main ethnic Albanian party, the Democratic Union for Integration, said in one incident, two party supporters were seriously wounded in a shootout with special police unit members near the village. She said one later died at the hospital.
Details of the exact events were unclear, but villagers told reporters that the problems began when one person tried to vote on behalf of multiple people.
A police official confirmed the number of dead and wounded in Aracinovo, and police cordoned off the village.
The State Election Commission said voting had been suspended in eight polling stations in Aracinovo. Earlier in the day, the commission had received reports of broken ballot boxes in the village.
In the capital, Mehmeti said, gunfire at or near party headquarters wounded at least one person.
Party members were inside the headquarters of the Democratic Union for Integration just outside the city center, but the party leader, ex-rebel leader Ali Ahmeti, was not in the building at the time, she said.
On May 12, gunmen had shot at Ahmeti’s car as he campaigned in Tetovo, wounding a bystander in what he described as an assassination attempt.
Mehmeti, speaking by telephone, said party members had taken cover in the basement. Sirens could be heard in the background.
Police could not immediately confirm the incident, but officers had cordoned off an area nearby where a shooting occurred near a polling station close to the party headquarters.
Voting was also suspended in Gurgurnica near Tetovo in the country’s ethnic Albanian northwest after men appeared armed with machine guns. Polling stations in the village of Malino, northwest of Skopje, never opened yesterday because ballot boxes were stolen overnight, the commission said.
It said voting was also halted in the village of Ciflig in the northwest because of ballot stuffing, and in Vrapciste south of Tetovo.
Ethnic Albanians account for about a quarter of Macedonia’s 2.1 million people. In 2001, rebel forces from the National Liberation Army fought a six-month insurgency against government forces in a bid to win more rights for ethnic Albanians.
Authorities had said a record number of police would be deployed for the vote, especially in volatile ethnic Albanian areas.
In Tetovo, “no weapons” posters were prominently displayed at the entrance to a polling station.
On the eve of the election, Radmila Sekerinska, leader of the Social Democrats, said the appearance of misleading campaign posters mimicking her own and voter lists with names almost identical to those on her own list was “a scheme aimed at transferring some of the votes from our list to the governing list.”
Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s center-right VMRO-DPMNE is seen as almost certain to win the election, being held two years early.
A recent opinion poll gave his party 31.3 percent of the vote compared with the Social Democrats’ 11.2 percent.
But it is unclear whether the 37-year-old leader will be able to win a majority of parliament’s 120 seats and avoid having to resort to a coalition to form a government.
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