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The New York Times is bemoaning a muddy election
outcome in North Macedonia. I beg to differ.
The outcome is no muddier than previous Macedonian
elections, which have consistently left the Albanian political
parties as the dealmakers and breakers. That is true this time as
well, with the added complication that no single Albanian party may
be able to give either of the main parties enough votes in
parliament to gain a commanding majority. So government formation is
likely to be a messy and perhaps lengthy process, but that is often
the case in parliamentary systems that have more than two parties or
electoral coalitions.
To focus on that is to miss the main point: both
the winning Socialists and the opposition Macedonian ethnic
nationalists did well in a serious and well-run electoral
competition. With the country still in the midst of the Covid-19
epidemic, former Prime Minister Zoran Zaev survived after agreeing
with Greece to change the official name of the country to North
Macedonia. The ethnic Macedonian ethnic nationalists led by
Hristijan Mickoski survived the downfall of its former leader and
prime minister, who somehow escaped from prison and remains in
exile.
Assuming Zaev is successful in government
formation negotiations, Macedonia* faces a future with a pro-EU and
pro-NATO government. That government will face a vigorous
opposition, one that would now be well-advised to refocus its
attention away from opposition to the Prespa Agreement towards EU
membership.
Even if Zaev fails to gain a majority in
parliament and Mickoski succeeds, the latter would need to govern in
alliance with one or more pro-NATO and pro-EU Albanian political
parties who back the Prespa Agreement. Nothing like that reasonable
outcome would be possible today in neighboring Serbia, Montenegro,
or Bosnia and Herzegovina. Macedonia is fortunate indeed.
A word too about the electoral process, which is
arguably more important than the outcome. The competition appears to
have run more smoothly than at times in the past. Yes, the website
of the electoral commission was hacked, but so too yesterday was Joe
Biden’s Twitter account. I can imagine who might have done it, but I
have no evidence. The hack was overcome and the election results are
clear. The OSCE has judged the election was “generally administered
effectively,” despite Covid-19. Concerns focused on legal changes
made too close to the election in OSCE’s judgment, even though some
were made to meet OSCE recommendations:
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