A large part of the activists, civil society organizations and opposition parties believe that yesterday’s decision by the Constitutional Court will allow the President to pardon people who have been prosecuted or sentenced of electoral fraud, and will only worsen the grounds for free and fair elections.
They say that with this decision, the court has helped people planning to commit electoral fraud, and not have to answer for it.
Yesterday, the civil initiative “Ajde” in reaction to the decision of the Constitutional Court wrote that recent events suggest that there are no conditions for free, fair and democratic elections on June 5th.
“We call upon the international community to closely monitor developments, which have obviously lead to a deepening of the political crisis in the country and clearly shows that there are no conditions in Macedonia for free, fair and democratic elections on June 5,” the statement said.
According to the leader of the Liberal Party, Ivon Velickovski the Constitutional Court decision is shameful.
“The decision by the Constitutional Court yesterday, which allows the President to pardon people prosecuted or sentenced for electoral crime, pedophilia, drug trafficking, is just shameful. And I think that the position of the civil society organizations is justified and that free, fair and democratic elections on June 5 is just not possible”, said Velickovski.
For Zdravko Saveski from the “Levica” party, yesterday’s Constitutional Court decision opens up even more opportunities for electoral fraud.
“The Constitutional Court have worsened the circumstances for fair, free and democratic elections. It opens more opportunities for electoral fraud and there is no guarantee that someone will be held accountable for his actions if he commits electoral fraud or even serious crimes. In this respect, I think this is a major setback from the Przhino Agreement”, Saveski said.
For the opposition SDSM, it is still too early to say whether there are conditions for fair and democratic elections.
“It’s still too early to speculate whether there will be conditions for fair elections. First, the State Election Commission has to cleanse the voters’ list and implement media reforms, and then we’ll see where we are and whether there are conditions for fair elections”, said SDSM.
