The Macedonia expert around here is Jay Nordlinger (take a look at his ‘Homage to Macedonia’ in a May 2015 NRODT issue). To read that piece is, among other topics, to read of a prolonged contest between the VMRO-DPMNE (abbreviated to “VMRO”) and the SDSM. As Jay explains it, “VMRO is a conservative party, led by Nikola Gruevski, the prime minister. The other party is the post-Communist party, the SDSM. They prefer to be known as social democrats now, and their leader is Zoran Zaev.”
As usual in Eastern Europe after 1989, party definitions are slippery. Some post-Communists are true democrats, genuine reformists, advocates of taking the country into a modern Europe, others are harder left, and others still are, so to speak, opportunists, chancers of no particular ideological bent, descendants—literal or figurative— of those who used to run the country, and would like to carry on doing so.
Meanwhile, judging by this Financial Times article from 2012, VMRO has made good progress on the economic front:
“Macedonia in 2006 was in the 96th position in the world, according to the World Bank’s annual ‘ease of doing business’ rankings. Now Macedonia is in 23rd position, in front of 20 European Union members, and all countries in central and eastern Europe, ” he told the audience of EuCham – European Chamber members in the Hungarian capital on November 13.
In truth, that ignores Estonia’s achievement – ranked 21st by the World Bank – and Georgia – an astonishing 9th place – but it does put Macedonia a comfortable 12 rungs ahead of Slovenia, which typically assumes pole position among the former Yugoslav states in terms of business friendliness.
Gruevski’s centre-right coalition governments since 2006 had achieved this by ensuring the country had “the lowest costs for doing business in Europe, I mean the lowest taxes,” he said. Measures include cutting both personal and corporate income taxes to a flat rate of 10 per cent, trimming social security contributions to 27 per cent, and enabling companies to be set up at a one-stop shop inside four hours.
Back to Jay:
A very big name in Macedonia is George Soros. He is the Hungarian-born American billionaire who funds the political Left in America. He funds it in Macedonia too, which is a sore spot for conservatives, to put it mildly. Their view goes essentially like this: In the early years after the collapse of Communism, Soros did many good things in Eastern Europe, with his Open Society Institute. He helped to liberalize and democratize. When the Greeks blockaded Macedonia, Soros loaned the new country money, a lifeline. In recent years, however, he has become a bald partisan, showering his millions on the Left and pushing for its agenda.
But it’s not just Soros, it’s you:
The U.S. taxpayer is involved in the following way: Our government, through USAID, gives money to the local Soros foundation… Macedonian conservatives say that we have simply picked sides in the politics of their country: the SDSM or “post-Communist” side. Others say that the Right makes a bogeyman out of Soros, and that the U.S. acts as an honest broker, holding all sides to account. In any event, conservatives are wounded — pained — by American relations with Macedonia in the Age of Obama. “We’re the pro-American, pro-Western party,” they say. Some add, “You’re driving us into the arms of the Russians.”
Uh oh.
It’s worth adding that VMRO complaints about the US taking sides include increasingly noisy dissatisfaction with what the American embassy has been up to in the country.
Now, Macedonian politics are, well, Balkan. A wire-tapping scandal has roiled the country’s politics, reinforcing concerns over a more authoritarian climate and triggered an early general election in December.
The election [came] amid a prolonged and deep political crisis centering on the opposition’s claim that Nikola Gruevski, the former Prime Minister and head of the main ruling VMRO-DPMNE party, is behind a mass illegal wiretapping; an allegation which he denies…
Two election dates were postponed by parliament earlier this year. The [December election] followed the signing of an EU-backed ‘renewed crisis agreement’ signed by all parties in the summer. The agreement put in place an interim government, including ministers from the opposition parties, and is aimed at ensuring that elections are free and fair.
After a rerun in one small village, VMRO won the most seats, but not a majority…
With the rerun result in, VMRO-DPMNE wins 454,577 votes and 51 seats in the 120-member Parliament to 436,981 votes and 49 seats for the Social Democrats.
But:
[The VMRO leader] will now need to form a coalition government with one or more of the Albanian-minority parties, as he has done in the past. Analysts said this time, coalition-building will be complicated by the emergence of two new Albanian-minority parties.
And those complications may include promises or half-promises by the SDSM to the Albanian parties that may (if only accidentally) risk stirring up ethnic tension in a region that has no need of more of it, and do so, incidentally, in a country that is also spent its time in the front line of Europe’s migrant crisis.
For now, VMRO leader Gruevski has sharpened his attacks on what he has described as foreign meddling in the country’s internal affairs, including by “some” ambassadors, presumably a reference to EU and US diplomats, not reassuring language from someone who has traditionally been pro-American.
Politics in this part of the world are difficult to follow from the outside (I haven’t even mentioned the problems that Greece has been making for Macedonia since the latter’s independence), but it’s probably not unreasonable to think that there has been plenty of sinning on all sides of this struggle. Jay quotes one Macedonian who observes that “you can’t go to bed in a Communist country and wake up in Denmark”. Under the circumstances, it’s hard not to worry that Brussels and the Obama administration, driven by ideology rather than a reality more complex than they are prepared to contemplate (or, perhaps, accept), may be wandering through a minefield with consequences that the U.S. may well not want to see.
Macedonia is, to borrow a phrase, a “faraway country”, but, to borrow another, “attention must be paid”.