North Macedonian presidential candidate Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova beat incumbent President Stevo Pendarovski by a wide margin, but both fell short of the 50 per cent needed to win outright, POLITICO reports.
The centre-right opposition candidate won 40.1 per cent of the vote, while President Stevo Pendarovski of the ruling Socialist Party received 19.9 per cent.
With neither candidate winning a majority of votes, Siljanovska-Davkova and Pendarovski will run in a run-off election on 8 May, the same day as the higher-stakes parliamentary elections. If she wins, she will become the first female president in the country’s history.
In her victory speech, Siljanovska-Davkova called the result inspiring. Pendarovski admitted that the election result was “far from expected” but emphasised that “from tomorrow a new day is dawning and we are starting from scratch.”
Seven candidates contested for the presidency. Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani of the ruling Democratic Union for Integration party came third with 13.4 per cent of the vote.
According to official figures, voter turnout exceeded 49 per cent, eight percentage points higher than in the first round of the last presidential election in 2019.
A 2017 agreement to change the country’s name from Macedonia to North Macedonia ended its dispute with Greece, but Bulgaria vetoed it in 2020 over issues of history and language that many North Macedonians say challenge their national identity. In 2001, the Western NATO alliance pulled North Macedonia back from the brink of civil war during an ethnic Albanian rebellion, and the country was promised faster integration into both the EU and NATO. It joined NATO in 2020.
