Macedonian municipal elections, scheduled for October 15th, have claimed a life, in what is the first killing of a candidate in Macedonian elections ever. Alit Abazi, an independent candidate for the Kicevo municipal council, was was shot together with a member of his team and a passer-by on September 27th. Several days later Abazi succumbed to his injuries.
The attacker was detained and police tried to brush off the incident as unrelated to the elections. But Kicevo, where Abazi was competing, is turf of the Democratic Union for Integration, a party representing ethnic Albanians that was formed by the commanders of the bloody 2001 insurgency. The commander of the insurgency and later DUI leader Ali Ahmeti is from a village near Kicevo, and his party exerts complete control over the Albanian villages of this municipality, often winning 100 percent of the vote with 100 percent turnout, using tactics that include absentee voting and family voting in this high emigration rural area where many of the inhabitants in reality live in Germany or in Switzerland. Ahmeti called on all other ethnic Albanian candidates to withdraw from the race and allow the DUI candidates for Mayor and the city Council to win a totality of the Albanian vote as usual. Abazi refused to withdraw from the race and it is widely believed that this was the reason for his assassination. Even before elections began, the Mayor of Bogovinje, another rural community in Western Macedonia, which is majority Albanian, was killed in apparent confrontation between two warring DUI factions. In another violent incident, the Mayor of Shuto Orizari was badly beaten up on October 2nd. Elvis Bajram, who is running for a third term as Mayor of Macedonia’s only majority ethnic Roma municipality, was attacked by a group of SDSM supporters carrying clubs and axes. He was brought to a hospital unconscious and needed six stitches on his head due to injuries he sustained.
“These are serious flaws in the election process. Gunshots, mob attacks, severe injuries, abuse of the police for election goals, threats, pressures, party offices being broken into, partisan activism on the part of Election Commission members.. This is the picture which SDSM leaves in its wake”, VMRO-DPMNE said in a press release after the killing of Aliti and the beating of the candidate it supports in Shuto Orizari.
Bajram is running as a candidate of the VMRO-DPMNE led coalition, and he was attacked by people affiliated with Kurto Dudush, the SDSM supported candidate for Mayor of Shuto Orizari. Adnan Memet, member of Bajram’s election team, said that he joined Bajram in meeting supporters when four men attacked them after coming from an election office opened by the SDSM led coalition. VMRO-DPMNE outlined the list of attacks which happened in the run up to the October 15th elections, and were aimed against VMRO-DPMNE candidates or other candidates who compete against SDSM and their coalition partner DUI.
Another serious incident is the police attack on VMRO-DPMNE candidate for Mayor of Kavadarci Mitko Jancev. Jancev, who is the manager of a major bottling plant in Kavadarci and is one of the most popular people in the region, was stopped by police as he was driving to Skopje to attend the VMRO-DPMNE pre-election convention. Police ordered him to the ground at gunpoint and held him and humiliated him for a longer period of time in apparent attempt to provoke him to react, VMRODPMNE said. And VMRO-DPMNE leader Nikola Gruevski had a man attack him with pepper spray during the party’s rally in Skopje’s downtown area.
VMRO-DPMNE also said that the SDSM and DUI parties are openly abusing the police, having local police chiefs act as political organizers in Kumanovo and Tetovo. A series of criminal charges were filed by SDSM police chiefs against VMRO-DPMNE Mayors, under fabricated charges, the conservative party added, all in the run up to the elections. The Mayor of Veles who is running for a second term was charged merely because the ownership of a mountain cabin in a neighboring municipality of Caska was given to that municipality. The Mayor of Kriva Palanka was charged because he organized school transportation for children of welfare recipients. In Prilep, Mayor Marjan Risteski, who is a strong favorite to win another term, received charges from the SDSM appointed local police chief because the town hall was not insured against damage. The damage in question was caused by SDSM supporters, during their protests in 2016, and Risteski mused over the issue of being charged by an SDSM appointed official for damage caused by SDSM supporters.
The Vevcani Mayor had his company raided, while frivolous charges were also filed against the Mayors of Kavadarci, Novo Selo and Stip, all of them from VMRO-DPMNE. In the case of Stip, Mayor Ilco Zahariev was charged because he built a road to a company that is employing hundreds of
people, VMRO-DPMNE said.
Other, lesser incidents, the party said, include daily attacks on election offices, bribery of vulnerable categories of people and threats that recipients of homes built for low income families will be kicked out if they support VMRO-DPMNE.
