The results of the presidential elections that took place this week in North Macedonia were as expected. In the first round, VMRO candidate Gordana Siljanovska/Davkova won.
This victory pushed North Macedonia into the slippery slope of political instability. After all, this was also the purpose of the Russian and Serbian intervention. The West again, similar to Montenegro, rained late!
These elections, especially those for Parliament, which are expected to be held on May 8, will give this fragile state the geopolitical weight it deserves. This result is a kind of product of the naivety of the so-called modern politicians of the Albanian political space.
As a Nation, as these elections also proved, we urgently need coordination in the field of political action strategy. Macedonians who feel themselves nationalists proved to be an absolute majority. Meanwhile, they will line up even more strongly in the so-called anti-Western front, somewhat similar to the majority of citizens in Montenegro. This was the trap they fell into.
VMRO-DPMNE is returning to power after a review and reorientation of the national political agenda. The ideologues of this political force seem to have strayed too far from its basic objectives. The party believes that its goals and objectives are the expression of the tradition of the Macedonian people on which the political struggle and its concepts are based.[1]
Let’s remember the fact that this party was founded under the name VMRO-DPMNE on June 17, 1990 in Skopje.[2] Since the process of the disintegration of Yugoslavia had begun and there was a real danger of Macedonia being devoured by Serbia, its founders would immediately contact the Bulgarian authorities to ensure the existence of Macedonia as an independent republic. In Sofia they assured that if Serbia would invade Macedonia, then Bulgaria would use all necessary means to oppose it.[3]
If VMRO-DPMNE’s leading ruling elite has rightly been criticized for its “antique” policy (known locally as “Antikvizacija”), in which the country seeks to appropriate ancient Macedonian figures such as Alexander the Great and Philip II Macedonia,[4] in an effort to build a new identity, different from the Bulgarian one, the current leaders are gradually returning to the Slavic Belgrade-Moscow axis. This reorientation of what is the truth has started since the time when this political force was led by Nikola Gruevski.
Meanwhile, in 2015, the former prime minister and leader of the VMRO-NP, Ljubço Georgievski, would oppose the serbian policies of his predecessor. In an interview for Radio Free Europe, he expressed his opinion that “the previous government had a clear goal: to keep the country closer to Serbia and in a future phase to join the northern neighbor.” According to him, “a classic pro-Yugoslav policy of Serbization was being developed, where confrontation with all other neighbors was being sought, but the border between Macedonian and Serbian national identity was erased.” [5]
“Stop the Serbian absorption of the Macedonian nation” was the motto of the advertisements then placed on the streets of Skopje, through which the Party launched the campaign for the preservation of the Macedonian national identity. The pro-government press claimed that the “Bulgarian” Georgievski organized a new provocation. As a result, the signs were quickly removed by the VMRO-DPMNE authorities. [6] The comeback had just begun.
The agreement with Greece would help this return, while membership in NATO would guarantee the survival and existence of the Republic. Thus, the way was being opened for the march towards the EU. But, in this context, the leaders of this multi-ethnic state could not be sure of a clean success: its prospects have been anything but clear since Greece vetoed its neighbor’s candidacy at the NATO summit. in Bucharest in 2008 due to the name conflict,[7] which will also be followed by Bulgaria’s condition regarding the constitutional position of the Bulgarian minority.
Only those who made up and make up over 1/3 of the population, i.e. the Albanians, did not put forward any conditions! At least not until the spring of 2001, when the National Liberation Army ended the experiment with the Albanians and imposed the Ohrid Agreement.
It was exactly the compromise presented by the Ohrid Agreement that guaranteed the Albanians a thread of moral and political dignity, but also that ended the war, that had brought into question the survival of Macedonia as a state.
Eleven years later, in a symbolic gesture of reconciliation, Greece would become the first country to ratify North Macedonia’s accession to the alliance.
On the road to North Macedonia’s alignment with the EU, as we stated above, another obstacle that North Macedonia faces on its way to European integration is, surprisingly, its now strained relations with Bulgaria.
North Macedonia thus returns to the whirlwind of geopolitical storms.
In September 2019, Bulgaria sent official Skopje a list of conditions that had to be met if they hoped to receive support for EU membership. The list includes twenty items with specific deadlines carefully aligned with the dates of pre-trial hearings.
One of them involves the withdrawal of the Macedonian side from any claims related to the........