North Macedonia conservatives on track for election victory

North Macedonia’s conservative party is set to return to power after seven years, scoring big wins in parliamentary and presidential elections on Wednesday.

The outcome is expected to further complicate North Macedonia’s longtime ambition of joining the European Union, as well as its relations with neighboring Bulgaria and Greece.

In parliamentary elections, the VMRO-DPMNE party gained 42.9 percent support with 87 percent of the votes counted, according to election commission results. The ruling SDSM socialists tumbled to just 14.9 percent of the vote. The conservatives may need to form a coalition to govern with a majority in the 120-seat parliament, however, as initial results had them on 59 MPs.

Meanwhile, VMRO-DPMNE candidate Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova will become the country’s first female president — a largely ceremonial position — having won 64.9 percent support with 87 percent of the votes counted, the results showed.

Voters in the tiny Balkan country of 2 million have expressed frustration with corruption, the slow pace of reform, and the sluggish advance of North Macedonia’s bid to join the European Union.

In 2018 the country reached a historic agreement, changing its name and constitution and ending a decades-long dispute with Greece. The deal allowed Skopje to join NATO in 2020; for the past two years, however, Bulgaria has blocked North Macedonia’s EU bid, demanding its constitution be amended to acknowledge the country’s Bulgarian minority.