It only took a day of decidedly deadly voting to arrive at that parliamentary victory. Nikola Gruevski, Macedonia’s 37-year-old prime minister, said his center-right party, VMRO-DPMNE, will control about half the seats in parliament, but the blood shed on election day will likely mar the country’s hopes of joining NATO and the European Union. More:

“One person was shot dead, nine were wounded, and voting stopped in one town after a gun battle. … Though official results of the election were pending, Sunday evening’s preliminary results showed VMRO far ahead of the opposition parties and the opposition leader Radmila Sekerinska conceded defeat.


…Gruevski has not been able to control violence among rival Albanian parties and the election commission has noted instances of fraud, missing and broken ballot boxes, and intimidation by armed men. International independent election observers reported widespread irregularities and suggested a rerun of the election in polling stations where abuses had taken place.”

Reuters has more on the day’s violence, which also included two electoral commission officials briefly being taken hostage.

(Map: U.S. State Department)