Macedonia: Voting List Scandal Casts Shadow On Elections

By

By Sinisa Jakov Marusic

An investigation by journalists raises suspicions of a large scale government scheme to bully civil servants into providing votes for the ruling party at the forthcoming June 5 early elections.

The national A1 TV on Sunday aired audio recordings of telephone conversations that they say prove the ruling VMRO DPMNE party plot.

The ruling party has denied the allegations.

Macedonia
Macedonia

The TV station, which is considered to be criticial of the government, claims that public administration employees were forced to provide lists of voters who would cast their ballot for the ruling party, in exchange for keeping their post or a promise of employment for their relatives or close associates.

Managers had to provide 30 names while other employees had to name 15, A1 TV alleges.

A1 says it is in possession of some of the lists provided by the civil servants, which include names, telephone numbers and the electoral district where the voters are registered.

Posing falsely as surveyors from a VMRO DPMNE call centre who wanted to check whether the listed people were indeed planning to vote for the party, A1 journalists called several civil servants who allegedly submitted names of voters the party could rely on.

The TV station aired some of the conversations in their news bulletin.

“We have a problem with the list you submitted. Two of the people [on the list] said they do not plan to vote [for VMRO DPMNE],” the journalist tells the public administration worker.

“How can they not now? I am trying to arrange a job for them here at the fund. I will call them, what else can I say,” replies the man, who says he works in the state health fund.

The man continues, explaining to the caller that in exchange for one woman’s vote, he is helping her access in vitro fertilization.

“If need be, I can double the list,” the man insists, arguing he had already filled the quota of 30 people.

“Can you guarantee that these people will vote for us?” the journalists ask another employee in the health fund.

A woman replies that she can vouch “1000 percent” that all 15 people she has listed will vote for the party. She says that her superior at work gave her the list.

“This was for my daughter’s employment,” another woman explains, adding: “She works in a school.”

The people contacted by the A1 journalists said that they were instructed to submit the lists one month ago.

In its press statement, VMRO DPMNE called the aired recording an “outrageous montage” that aims to discredit them. The party said A1 worked in support of the opposition Social Democrats.

“These are documents that were forged in the Social Democrats headquarters and presented via their coalition partner- A1,” the press statement reads.

The TV says that it has plenty of other audio and video evidence to prove the scheme and that it will submit all of its findings to the State Election Commission and to the election monitors.

The spokesperson for the OSCE/ODIHR election monitoring mission in Skopje, Egor Tilpunov, told Balkan Insight that they will “wait and see what the State Electoral Commission says or does about it” and that they will file all their remarks in the report after the elections.

We are going to underline there all issues that we consider to be important,” Tilpunov said.

The organisation MOST, which provides most of the local election monitors, expressed concern about the allegations in a letter to Balkan Insight. “Regardless of whether they are true or false, they can seriously harm the election process,” read the letter sent by MOST spokesperson Teodora Popovska.

The NGO said that it had not yet received the data that A1 said it would send to them, but urged the State Electoral Commission to “undertake measures in accordance with its responsibilities and the electoral code”.

So far the Commission, which is tasked with conducting the elections, has been silent about the affair.

The problem of the politization and pressure on public office workers was mentioned in reports by domestic and foreign monitors in the 2008 early elections as well as after the 2009 local and presidential polls.

Balkan Insight

The Balkan Insight (formerly the Balkin Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN) is a close group of editors and trainers that enables journalists in the region to produce in-depth analytical and investigative journalism on complex political, economic and social themes. BIRN emerged from the Balkan programme of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, IWPR, in 2005. The original IWPR Balkans team was mandated to localise that programme and make it sustainable, in light of changing realities in the region and the maturity of the IWPR intervention. Since then, its work in publishing, media training and public debate activities has become synonymous with quality, reliability and impartiality. A fully-independent and local network, it is now developing as an efficient and self-sustainable regional institution to enhance the capacity for journalism that pushes for public debate on European-oriented political and economic reform.

2 thoughts on “Macedonia: Voting List Scandal Casts Shadow On Elections

  • May 10, 2011 at 11:21 am
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    Not surprised, a government falsifying history and corrupting the election system at the same time

    Reply
  • May 10, 2011 at 1:55 pm
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    Before you publish this kind of tabloidesque investigation you need, first and foremost, to present both sides of the story or at least give the accused party a fair chance to air its position. You fall into the same trap that you try to present as evidence.
    To the person above (pooley) who stated that the government falsifies history I have one thing to say to you:
    You have, are and will be the scum of the earth because you are one heck of a persistent izdajnik.

    Reply

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