Macedonia's ruling party wins majority of parliament seats

Macedonia's ruling party VMRO-DPMNE has defeated its main rival SDSM with a slim lead in early elections, winning a parliamentary majority of 51 seats, the state elections commission announced Monday morning.

Based on the counting of 99.34 percent of the ballots, the coalition led by former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's VMRO-DPMNE party won 38.06 percent of the vote, while the coalition headed by opposition leader Zoran Zaev's SDSM party won 36.69 percent, according to representatives of Macedonia's state elections commission.

The voting result means VMRO-DPMNE will hold 51 seats in the Macedonian parliament and the SDSM two seats less.

The commission said the elections were a success despite some minor irregularities.

Gruevski, the winner of the elections, declared that the elections showed Macedonia is a democratic country and able to hold free and fair elections.

"We won with more than 400,000 votes and I am so grateful to all the citizens who trusted and voted for our coalition," Gruevski said.

The elections were called two years early as a way out of the prolonged political crisis which started last year, after the main opposition party SDSM accused the ruling party VMRO-DPMNE of illegal wiretapping and corruption. Endi