Macedonia's snap elections result remains unchanged after revote

Macedonia's ruling party VMRO-DPMNE led by former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski reconfirmed Sunday its win in a national election after the opposition failed to gain enough votes in a rerun in a single station to change the result, local media reported.

The VMRO-DPMNE won 150 votes, while the opposition, the Social Democratic Union (SDSM), took 245 votes, the State Election Commission (SEC) informed.

The final result of the snap elections has remained unchanged because the SDSM needed to win by 307 votes in order to garner another mandate in this zone.

The VMRO-DPMNE will take 51 seats in the upcoming 120-member Parliament. The SDSM led by Zoran Zaev will keep 49 seats.

Macedonia reopened Sunday morning one polling station in the village of Tearce, northwestern Macedonia, following the administrative court decision on last Tuesday to repeat voting.

The decision was taken after the complaints raised by the SDSM about voting irregularities during the snap elections of Dec. 11.

In the first voting in Tearce, 404 registered voters cast ballots. the VMRO-DPMNE won 91 votes against 87 for SDSM, while the rest were split among four Albanian-minority parties.

The SDSM was hoping to gain another mandate in Tearce, which could alter the elections result at national level and become the party to run negotiations for the creation of a new government.

After the publication of the results by the SEC, representatives of the VMRO-DPMNE thanked the voters of Tearce for their supports reconfirming the Dec. 11 election result.

They also said that VMRO-DPMNE remained committed to forming the new government as soon as possible.

source: Xinhua