Macedonia Mall Referendum Fails to Meet Target

A first-ever local referendum in Macedonia, on the future of a famous mall in Skopje, appeared to have failed on Sunday after only 40 per cent of residents of the municipality of Centar cast ballots.

A 50-plus threshold was needed for the vote to be pronounced successful.

Speaking late on Sunday, Centar mayor Andrej Zernovski said that almost everyone who did vote backed calls to preserve the iconic 1970s GTC - City Trade Centre from a planned Baroque makeover.

"Over 95 per cent of the votes went for the preservation of the authentic look of the GTC", he said, adding that this ought to send a message to the government, despite the formal failure of the referendum. "No one can dare to ruin the authenticity of the GTC," Zernovski continued.

The mayor blamed the failure to interest local voters partly on what he called the inaccurate electoral roll inherited from last year's elections, which the opposition did not recognize, and on a silent strategy of the part of Macedonia's main ruling party to boycott the vote.

"If we had had a real electoral roll, the turnout would have been more than 60 per cent," Zernovski claimed.

Opposition parties claim the electoral roll for the Centar district of Skopje, containing some 43,500 names, is suspiciously large and contains many fictive voters who have been misused during previous elections.

Recently revealed secretly taped conversations of government officials support the opposition claims that the electoral rolls in Macedonia are routinely tampered with.

In some conversations, senior government officials openly plot various election malpractices.

CIVIL - Centre for Freedom, an NGO which regularly monitors Macedonia's elections and which on this occasion...