Macedonia's Presidential Elections: Background and History Anastas Vangeli

Home , Boris Trajkovski, Gjorge Ivanov, Kiro Gligorov, Stevo Pendarovski

ISSN: 2560-1601

Vol. 16, No. 1 (MK)

March 2019

North Macedonia political briefing: Macedonia's Presidential Elections: Background and History Anastas Vangeli

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Macedonia's Presidential Elections: Background and History

Introduction

The key event in the political calendar of Macedonia in 2019 are the sixth national presidential elections. The first round of the elections will take place on April 21, 2019; if needed, a second round will take place on May 5, 2019. The incumbent President, Gjorge Ivanov, who is finishing his second term in power, will not run for re-election, as according to the Constitution, a President cannot serve for more than two consecutive terms. Three candidates will compete in the first round of the elections: Stevo Pendarovski backed by the ruling coalition of SDSM and DUI (and their junior partners); Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova backed by VMRO-DPMNE (and their junior partners); and Blerim Reka, backed by Besa and the Alliance for Albanians (smaller ethnic Albanian parties). However, even though backed by political parties, all of the three candidates – all of them university professors – present themselves as independent; they have all been nominated via a process of collection of 10.000 voters' signatures (and not through the alternative method, securing the support of 30 members of Parliament). The candidate who will obtain “a majority (50%+1) of the total number of voters” wins the election. Unless there is a clear winner on April 21 (very unlikely, given the history of the presidential elections, and the public opinion polls ahead of the 2019 election), a second round will take place, in which only the top two vote-getters from the first round will take part (expected to be Pendarovski and Siljanovska). The 2019 presidential elections are the first nation-wide elections that take place after the official change of the name of the country into “the Republic of North Macedonia,” and the attitudes towards the name issue and the process of renaming of the country play an important role in the campaign and in the outcome.

Looking forward to the 2019 Presidential Elections, in this paper we provide a quick background on Macedonia's Presidency, and then provide an overview of the past presidential elections and the four Presidents of the country in the period 1991-2019. We will discuss the candidates and the context of the 2019 elections in the next paper on Macedonia's politics (April 2019), and the outcome and consequences of the Presidential elections in the one after the next (May 2019).

Macedonia's Presidency

Macedonia has a parliamentary political system; the President of the country is part of the executive branch of the government, but their role is not as significant as in presidential or semi- presidential systems. The President is chosen via direct, free and secret popular elections in the country and in the diasporic communities; the President is elected for a term of 5 years, and can serve maximum two consecutive terms; by law, the President, once elected must detach themselves from any other affiliation of work while in office.

While mostly ceremonial, the President has certain powers that make the Presidency important for the political system of the country. The President is the highest dignitary and representative of the Republic, making them particularly important in terms of the implementation of Macedonia's foreign policy and the international representation of the country. The President is also a Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the country, and presides over the National Security Council that oversees and coordinates national security and defense affairs. The President also matters in the process of promulgation of laws – the Parliament cannot promulgate new laws without the signature of the President of the Republic – although the President, according to the letter of the Constitution, does not have unlimited power to choose which laws they will sign or not (in some cases the President is obliged to sign a law, e.g. when a law is reconsidered by the Parliament after initial rejection of the President to sign; or when a law is adopted with a 2/3 of the votes in Parliament). There are few other powers that define the Presidency, which are to be found in Article 84 of the Macedonian Constitution, according to which the President:

“- nominates a mandator to constitute the Government of the Republic of Macedonia;

- appoints and dismisses by decree ambassadors and other diplomatic representatives of the Republic of Macedonia abroad;

- accepts the credentials and letters of recall of foreign diplomatic representatives;

- proposes two judges to sit on the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Macedonia;

- proposes two members of the Republican Judicial Council;

- appoints three members to the Security Council of the Republic of Macedonia;- proposes the members of the Council for Inter-Ethnic Relations;

- appoints and dismisses other holders of state and public office determined by the Constitution and the law;

- grants decorations and honours in accordance with the law;

- grants pardons in accordance with the law; and

- performs other duties determined by the Constitution.”

Since its independence, Macedonia has had four presidents: Kiro Gligorov (1991-1999), Boris Trajkovski (1999-2004), Branko Crvenkovski (2004-2009) and Gjorge Ivanov (2009- 2019). In 2019, the voters will elect the fifth President of the Republic. While we will discuss the candidates for the 2019 elections in the next politics paper (April 2019), here we will briefly overview the history of the presidencies and (the often controversial) presidential elections in the past 18 years.

Macedonia's Presidents 1991-2019

Macedonia's President was not always chosen via popular direct elections. Kiro Gligorov, a veteran Yugoslav politician, was elected in January 1991 via a vote in the Parliament (he had an overwhelming support of 114 out of 120 Members of Parliament) to be the first President of Macedonia. Gligorov established himself as a charismatic and powerful President. He oversaw the country's independence from Yugoslavia (8 September 1991) and was instrumental in preventing Macedonia descending into war following the breakup of Yugoslavia. In 1994, Gligorov, supported by the ruling coalition led by SDSM, ran for the first direct Presidential elections; his only opponent was Ljubisha Gjorgiveski supported by VMRO-DPMNE; Gligorov won the elections by a landslide. Nevertheless, the elections were marred by controversies – a number of votes were excluded from the count, which lead to contestation of the electoral outcome by VMRO-DPMNE. Gligorov survived an assassination attempt in 1995 and after being released from the hospital, returned to office and completed his mandate, stepping down in 1999. Gligorov passed away in 2012.

The second President of the country was Boris Trajkovski, who was backed by VMRO- DPMNE. In the 1999 elections he had five opponents. In the first round, Trajovski finished second, trailing behind Tito Petkovski of SDSM. However, in the second round, he managed to attract the votes of some of the other candidates eliminated in the first round, and win against

Petkovski. The 1999 elections were also marred by a number of irregularities, with the voting process in the second round being repeated in more than 200 polling stations. This has also led to the outcome being contested by the loser of the elections – SDSM did not recognize Trajkovski as a legitimate President well into his mandate. Trajkovski, nevertheless, managed to establish himself as a peacemaking figure during the armed conflict in 2001; for his role in the reconciliation process, he is credited by various political actors in the country and abroad. Trajkovski died in a plane crash in February 2004 – his plane crashed on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

After the death of Trajkovski, early Presidential elections took place in April 2004. The then incumbent Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski, the leader of SDSM (who also was Prime Minister of Macedonia 1992-1998) won the elections. In the first round, he won the highest number of votes, running against three opponents (but did not win the majority of the votes); in the second round, he faced Sashko Kedev, the number 2 vote-getter from the first round, a well known cardio-surgeon who was supported by VMRO-DPMNE. Crvenkovski won the second round by a huge margin, however the electoral outcome led to a number of allegations of electoral fraud by VMRO-DPMNE, who had initially disputed the legitimacy of the Crvenkovski. Crvenkovski, who was considered the politically most powerful figure in Macedonia since its independence until the mid 2000s, had limited success as a President, and often clashed with the VMRO-DPMNE government led by Nikola Gruevski who took power in 2006. Crvenkovski did not run for re-election; instead, he returned to the position of president of SDSM and leader of the opposition, after his mandate as President of the Republic ended in 2009. He retired from politics in 2013.

Crvenkovski was succeeded by Gjorge Ivanov, a professor of political science supported by VMRO-DPMNE, who won the presidential elections in 2009, in the competition of a total of seven candidates. In the second round, Ivanov won against Ljubomir Frchkoski, a professor of law, who used to serve in the SDSM governments in the 1990s. Ivanov and Frchkoski used to be close friends and collaborators, but by the elections in 2009 their friendship turned into a bitter rivalry. Ivanov won by a huge margin, although the turnout in the second round was slightly above the required threshold for Presidential elections (40% of the registered voters). Allegations of fraud and irregularity also marred the 2009 elections. In 2014, Ivanov became the first President to win two consecutive elections. The elections overlapped with early Parliamentary elections. Ivanov faced three opponents for the Presidency; the most serious of them Stevo Pendarovski of SDSM. Ivanov won the second round against Pendarovski by a significant margin, however both the Parliamentary and Presidential elections were marred by

4 controversy. In 2019, Pendarovski is running again for the Presidency, often citing the injustice of 2014 and arguing that he was supposed to be the winner of those elections.

As a president, Gjorge Ivanov has been overshadowed by the VMRO-DPMNE governments (2009-2017), and has recently confronted with the SDSM government (2017- 2019). He played mostly a supporting role for the Gruevski-led governments in the period 2009- 2015. In the period of Macedonia's protracted political crisis 2015-2017, he played a pro-active role, first by issuing a blanket amnesty for all politicians probed by the Special Prosecutor's Office (April 2016), triggering mass protests; and then by refusing to pass the mandate to form a government to Zoran Zaev of SDSM, after Gruevski failed to secure a majority in the Parliament in January 2017. Ivanov has also opposed the Prespa Agreement and the renaming of the country into “North Macedonia.”