Balkans
“Of course, the situation in Macedonia would precipitate after the protests organised every evening, months without a government and the political crisis that has been going on for two and a half years”: this is the comment made by political analyst Nikolay Krastev, an expert in Balkans, about the violent riots that took place at the Macedonian Parliament last night. The final report speaks of about 100 injured people, including 70 citizens, 22 policemen, and 3 Members of Parliament. The protesters broke into Parliament in Skopje after the election of the Albanian-born MP Talat Xhaferi as president of the General Assembly. “I do not think Xhaferi’s personality is such a big problem; he is well known in Macedonia, he was defence minister in Nikola Gruevski’s government led by the centre-right party Vmro, and he was in charge of relations with NATO”, Krastev explains to SIR. And he adds: “Speaking Albanian at the Macedonian Parliament is an everyday custom, it is one of the articles of the 2001 Ohrid Treaty signed by the Macedonian government and the Albanian ethnic rebels to put an end to armed conflict”. According to Krastev, “part of the protests and the political crisis are to blame on president Gjorge Ivanov, also a member of Vmro, who has not yet wanted to let the Social Democrat leader Zoran Zaev form a government with the Albanian minority party”. For two years now, Vmro, which has been uninterruptedly ruling for a decade, has been at loggerheads with the Social Democrat party (Sdsm) and its leader, Zoran Zaev. “Xhaferi’s election and the Social Democrats’ will to rule are supported by the EU and the USA, which firmly condemned the attack on Parliament and the use of violence, calling everyone to abide by democratic principles and immediately look for a way out of the crisis, which might be dangerous”.
