MACEDONIA has spent almost two years in a political maelstrom brought on by the release of tapes suggesting massive corruption by the government and its security services. The country’s election on December 11th was supposed to resolve the crisis, but may only have deepened it. With more than 99% of votes counted, it is still unclear who won. The vote is close, and both leading parties have claimed victory. “The regime has fallen,” said Zoran Zaev, the leader of the opposition Social Democrats. Nikola Gruevski, the former prime minister and victor in the past four general elections, claimed he had won again. An increasing number of ballots are being challenged, which could force some polling stations to rerun the vote. That might take two more weeks. “Things could get ugly,” said Ana Petruseva, the head of the Macedonian office of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.
Europe tends to ignore Macedonia until it lands at the centre of an international crisis, as it has a habit of doing. In 2001, ethnic Albanian guerrillas threatened to spark a new Balkan war. In 2015, the country became a station on the route taken by over a million Middle Eastern and...Continue reading
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