The vote of the Macedonian emigrants and the manner in which political parties spent money on the election campaign are the most contentious issues of the modifications to the election law, according to the opposition and the experts, after the Ministry of Justice revealed Wednesday the modifications prepared in line with the recommendations from the OSCE.

SDSM say that unless certain modifications are made to the election law in adherence with their suggestions, they will not vote for the law. The OSCE said they were satisfied that a procedure to modify the law started at all yet warned that they would still control whether the necessary modification were being made.

Under the modifications, the diaspora is going to vote by the majority principle. In order to be able to vote, Macedonian citizens abroad will have to fill out special forms. It will also be made possible to send the forms online. Defining clearly who is responsible for the census of the diaspora is very important. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs says that this should be done by the State Election Commission but according to some experts it would be best if the procedure was carried out by the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Also, there should not be any dilemmas as regards the number of voters of the diaspora, considering that an accurate voters’ list stands for a quality election, says Aleksandar Novakovski, president of the State Election Commission.

He suggests application of the Croatian model for taking a census of the diaspora, or a so-called voters’ census, by which a few times in a year the number of voters on the ground is compared to the voters’ list.

“We cannot accept such a solution considering it is not yet defined what emigrants are eligible to vote. We cannot allow that there is no voters’ list for the diaspora, because that would make the election illegitimate,” Cevtanka Ivanova from SDSM said.

SDSM believe that the fact that only employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be members of the election committees responsible for the vote of the diaspora is contentious too, particularly in view of the remark of the European Commission that the public administration is partisan.

“It is physically impossible for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to appoint people from its own ranks in all election committees. I propose that the presidents of the election committees be from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and that the other two members be Macedonian citizens living abroad,” says Professor Gordana Siljanovska.