Eurasia Press & News
Macedonia’s opposition and some analysts have rebuffed a proposal put forward by the ruling VMRO DPMNE party to dispatch party officials to monitor Sunday’s election, saying its a way to exert pressure on public administration employees to vote in favour of the government’s candidates.
They argue that this move will simply intimidate public administration workers, as many of the officials VMRO plans to field are high ranking party officials, head of state institutions and even ministers.
They say that if an employee were to see his or her boss overlooking the ballot, they would surely feel pressure to vote for the ruling party.
The spokesman for the main opposition party, the Social Democrats, Emilijan Stankovis, blames VMRO officials for exerting “unseen pressure towards the public administration and squandering its assets on political purposes”.
Several days ago, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, noted complaints from workers in this sector that they feel that they are being intimidated to vote for the ruling parties in order to keep their jobs.
“The people are afraid that the secrecy of their vote will not be respected,” Skopje University law professor Renata Deskoska told the daily ”Vreme” newspaper. She argues that in an atmosphere of constant fear of losing their jobs, the appearance of the state officials can additionally increase pressure.
“If this is true it will mean there will be direct political influence and pressure against voters,” Slagjana Taseva the head of the Transparency-Zero Corruption NGO told the same newspaper.
VMRO says the party officials will contribute with their authority to securing a peaceful and fair election process on Sunday. They called on other parties to follow their move and appoint their officials as monitors as well.
