POLITICS-MACEDONIA: A Vote Against Corruption and Nationalism

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

SKOPJE, Macedonia, Sep 16 2002 (IPS) - The government of Ljubco Georgijevski was voted out Sunday in elections in Macedonia, formerly a part of Yugoslavia. The result was being seen by many as a vote against corruption and hard-line nationalism.

“The people of Macedonia chose what they really wanted,” Georgijevski told national television. “We will be constructive opposition to the new government.”

Preliminary results indicated that the coalition Together for Macedonia led by Branko Crvenkovski (40) won at least 62 of 120 seats in the national assembly. “On Monday we celebrate, but the day after there is hard work to do,” Crvenkovski told his Social Democrat supporters at the party headquarters.

The elections were crucial, coming after last year’s bloody conflict between Macedonians of Slav origin and the ethnic Albanian minority. Macedonia is the only part of former Yugoslavia that obtained independence peacefully.

More than 100 people died on both sides last year in what Georgijevski’s government called an “Albanian war for territories.” Thousands from both sides were displaced in the six-month conflict. Ethnic Albanians are about a third of Macedonia’s two million population.

The international community forced Georgijevski’s government and ethnic Albanian rebels to sign a peace document. The accord gave broader rights to the non-Slav minority, with provisions for power sharing. The rebels led by Ali Ahmeti laid down their arms.

Ahmeti’s political party, the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) established only last year, ranked third in the elections, getting between 15 and 17 seats. Georgijevski’s Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO) won 32 seats. Another ethnic Albanian party, the Democratic Party for Albanians, won between four and seven seats, early results indicated. National television said voter turnout was 70 per cent, the highest in 20 years in the region.

Crvenkovski, poised to be prime minister for the next four years, is not a newcomer to the job. Eleven years ago, at 29, he became the first prime minister of newly independent Macedonia, becoming also the youngest European prime minister. He held that post twice but his party lost to Georgijevski’s nationalist VMRO in 1998. Crvenkovski, a former communist official, is now described as moderate leftist.

He now has the task of tackling widespread corruption. Macedonia has been described by the International Crisis Group (ICG) as among the most corrupt in the Balkans.

An ICG report released in August said: “Corruption dragged the country down, as it has evolved from a system of passive exploitation to active coercion. Corruption now has the capacity not only to retard economic progress and feed organised crime, but also to increase the risk of political and communal instability.”

Edward Joseph, director of the ICG project in Macedonia says that “in effect the state has come to function in important respects as a ‘racket’, and the racketeers thrive in a culture of impunity.”

There are other problems facing the new government. “What was tackled only a little in the election campaign is the economy, and that is what hurts Macedonia most,” says analyst Saso Ordanoski.

Gross domestic product fell 4.6 per cent last year due to the fighting. Unemployment stands at 40 per cent. Corruption has turned away foreign investors. There is uncertainty also how Ahmeti will handle the power sharing.