President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova voted in the second round of the Local Elections at the Kole Nedelkovski Primary School in the Municipality of Centar, where she stated that she expects the election day to pass peacefully, for the elections to be completed, and then for the mayors and councilors to get down to work.
Answering journalistic questions about the course of the campaign, she pointed out something that is extremely unusual in Europe and the world, but regularly occurs here: “In the European countries, only people who have permanent residence in the municipality vote in local elections. So, they spend the day and night there. People who, according to the logic of the census rules, are registered in those countries do not vote in local elections. Why? Because they vote there – where they live, where they pay taxes, where their children go to school, where they work, that is where they vote. We have a paradox – for people who have already voted in Austria, France, Switzerland to come in an hour and elect mayors and councilors. You can check, that is an unknown democratic phenomenon.”
Asked about the absence of women on the electoral lists, she assessed that despite the simplified procedure, very few women ran again, and the reasons are probably more.
“First, the surprise. Suddenly you are faced with the opportunity to run for office yourself with two signatures. We are responsible beings and we always think about whether we are the best solution, whether we will be able to respond to this challenge, especially if we are not supported by people who trust us. That is the first. The second is related to the political culture. There are probably still strong elements of, unfortunately, a patriarchal and parochial political culture, so we think in such a way that, perhaps, we are not the best. So, this incident with the absence of a member due to the decision of the Constitutional Court, which will regulate the candidacy, showed and proved that we women also have a serious problem. I am not saying that it is a lack of confidence in ourselves, but I think it is related to the fact that we are more responsible, because we have a harder path in life, we always have dilemmas, those who do not think or think that they are naturally gifted to be original politicians, MPs, councilors, mayors and so on, make the easiest decisions. But I think that this lesson should be well. “We need to learn it to change things”, President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova said.
