Who is macedonia president

Florian Bieber, a Balkans expert at the University of Graz, wrote on Twitter that Zaev's party's defeat in the mayoral elections "was in part self-inflicted bad campaign, stagnating reforms and due to failure of EU to deliver.

Subscribe for our daily curated newsletter to receive the latest exclusive Reuters coverage delivered to your inbox. More from Reuters. Gruevski fled North Macedonia in November in the midst of a corruption trial. He remains a fugitive in Hungary, where he was given political asylum. In the meantime, another case has been brought against Gruevski back home in North Macedonia, accusing him of money laundering.

Two and a half years into SDSM's rule, the atmosphere is completely different from the early optimism that things might "suddenly become better," according to Ordanoski. People are not ready anymore to dwell deeper into the rational analysis of who-does-what and who-offers-what and what is for their better future," Ordanoski explained. During his first term, which lasted from to , Zaev resolved the long-lasting dispute with Greece over the country's name by signing the Prespa Agreement in In March , neighbouring Bulgaria issued a veto against the beginning of North Macedonia's EU accession talks over a language dispute.

Bulgaria claims that the language spoken in North Macedonia is a local variant of Bulgarian, and has since refused to lift the veto unless the language referred to as Macedonian is recognised as Bulgarian in the European Union.

In addition to the two vetos, the Union's constant rejection of North Macedonia as a viable membership contender also played a part in the Zaev government's demise, Ordanovski points out.

According to Trosanovski, North Macedonia will be blocked for a long time by Bulgaria in its EU accession bid regardless of whether the current government remains in power. They didn't have much room for maneuver anyway and the European Union itself is preoccupied with other problems and internal dysfunction," Trosanovski said.

One of the main reasons for the SDSM's losses in the recent local elections, according to Neziri, is due to the poor management of the municipalities by party officials and mayors. After the SDSM formed the government in the spring of , the party won 57 mayoral seats from a total of 80 municipalities in local elections in the fall of that year. In the recent local election campaign, the opposition criticized SDSM mayors for their performance on improving local infrastructure -- for example, traffic management, water supplies, and sewage treatment.

The opposition challenger in the capital, Skopje, who went on to win the poll, said that the former Mayor Petre Silegov had accomplished only 5 percent of his electoral promises in the city. Since coming to power, the SDSM has been hampered by internal rifts and high-profile figures leaving the party. In , Zaev became leader of the party in tandem with Radmila Sekerinska, who was given the new role of vice president. But this year, current Defense Minister Sekerinska decided to step down from her party role after reportedly having a dispute with Zaev, the substance of which is not publicly known.

And former Finance Minister Dragan Tevdovski, who was considered to be the architect of the party's economic program, was dismissed from the government. One of the biggest electoral blows for the SDSM was delivered by the former mayor of Kumanovo, Maksim Dimitrievski, who was also an old opposition ally of Zaev. Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Turkmenistan Uzbekistan. Armenia Azerbaijan Georgia.

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