Macedonians to Vote in Parliamentary Polls on April 27

Macedonia will hold early parliamentary elections on April 27 following a dispute within the ruling coalition over presidential polls, state MIA news agency reported Thursday.

Parliamentary speaker Trajko Veljanoski called the snap polls a day after 117 MPs in the 123-seat assembly voted to dissolve parliament.

The initiative for the snap elections was taken by the ethnic Albanian party, the junior partner in the conservative government of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, after it rejected an April 13 re-election bid by President Gjorge Ivanov, the candidate backed by Gruevski's VMRO-DPMNE party.

The election for parliament will coincide with a presidential run-off if no winner emerges after the April 13 vote.

A voter survey in December showed the ruling party would win 59 seats in parliament in early polls, against 36 for the opposition Social Democrats.

Gruevski's cabinet has been in power since June 2011. Regular elections were normally due in mid-2015.

Relations between Macedonians and ethnic Albanians in the former Yugoslav republic have been strained since the end of a seven-month conflict in 2001 that pitted the landlocked Balkan country's armed forces against ethnic Albanian rebels.

Ethnic Albanians make up some 25 percent of Macedonia's population of two million.