The electoral code has once again become a battlefield between the government and the opposition. Parliament has opened the session on the amendments, and SDSM has threatened a blockade with as many as 10,000 amendments - a move that guarantees long days of debate and a stalled procedure.

The proposal is backed by VMRO-DPMNE, Vredi, ZNAM and DUI, while SDSM and Levica are signalling resistance. SDSM leader Venko Filipche claims that the government of Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski is trying to set up a system of "controlled voting", while Dimitar Apasiev's Levica says the proposed solutions are partial and discriminatory. Mickoski, for his part, called for an agreement and offered a compromise.

One of the contentious issues is electronic voting for citizens abroad in the upcoming elections. The government presents it as a step forward; the opposition fears the fast-track procedure hides rules rigged in favour of those in power. The electoral code, incidentally, is one of five laws to which the ban on obstruction doesn't apply - which means a blockade by amendment is a perfectly legal tactic.

And so, instead of an agreement on the rules of the game, we get a fight over the rules themselves. When each side accuses the other of wanting to rig the elections, the citizen is left with a fair question - who exactly are they supposed to trust? The electoral code is meant to be the foundation of trust in democracy; here, it seems, it's just one more arena for score-settling, in which the real loser is the belief that a vote changes anything at all.