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Our mission is to further the promotion of liberal democracy and the safeguarding
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Countries: Macedonia |
Posted on Friday, July 25, 2008 - 01:18 PM
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New coalition and government formed
On July 5th, Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and ethnic Albanian leader Ali Ahmeti agreed a coalition for the troubled country's new government.
In June 1 snap parliamentary poll Gruevski's nationalist VMRO-DPMNE won by a landslide, while Ahmeti's Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) dominated in the Albanian minority, making up one-quarter of the 2.1 million Macedonians.
In the previous government, which lasted less than two years, Gruevski partnered with the bitter rivals of the DUI, the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA).
The rivalry between the DUI and the DPA stirred violence which marred the June 1 elections and forced a repeat vote at nearly 200 polling stations in Albanian-dominated north-western Macedonia.
Below-standard elections like this, as well as systemic corruption and stalled reforms have prevented Macedonia from progressing far toward European Union membership since winning the status of a candidate in 2005.
Kept out of the EU
In addition, diplomatic wrangling with Athens over the name Macedonia, which Greece claims for its northern province, left it on the doorstep of NATO three months ago, while two other Balkan nations, Croatia and Albania, received a membership invitation.
The Macedonians would be well advised to forget about the name change until after they are well inside the EU. They are hardly likely to be expelled from it for such a move, which it is particularly childish of the Greeks to refuse. They are not descended from the Ancient Greeks at all, but from Slavs and Albanians who settled Greece in medieval times. Anyway Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great finished off the great age of Greece by conquering it and destroying the independence of its city states.
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