Macedonia’s ruling VMRO party and the opposition Social Democrats were in a virtual dead heat after national elections Sunday, according to preliminary results, with both claiming victory.
With 99.7 percent of votes counted, the state electoral commission put former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s VMRO on 38.06 percent and the Social Democrats on 36.69 percent. Election monitors Most Association said early Monday it could not estimate the number of seats each party had won because the result was too close to call.
Both parties claimed to have won the election late Sunday.
“We won once again. Tonight, today on December 11, the tenth victory in a row,” said Vlatko Gjorcev, a senior VMRO official, at the group’s headquarters, AFP reported.
Shortly after that statement, Zoran Zaev, the Social Democrat leader, claimed it was his party that was victorious.
“We are the winners,” Zaev told a crowd in Skopje, according to AFP. “We have one more seat, we are waiting for the final results … but the trend is clearly in our favor.”
Macedonia has been mired in a political crisis since 2014, when the Social Democrats refused to recognize an election won by Gruevski, who has ruled the country for almost a decade. Gruevski stepped down in January this year and was replaced by a caretaker government that sought to pass reforms to ensure fair elections. Polls were postponed twice because the conditions were not met.