We saw each other in the referendum, we will again in the election


The year, in which the most daring dreams of a large part of Macedonian citizens began, is coming to its end with political nightmares. Prime Minister Zoran Zaev still believes that in the new 2019, nightmares will become the past, and the dreams that have begun will be fulfilled.
– We are nearing the end of one of the most important and most sensitive years for our country. The year of integration. May we turn our wishes and goals into a reality – a peaceful and stable country, an ally of NATO and a member of the EU, a global and just Macedonia with an economy that functions for everyone, said Zoran Zaev in his New Year’s greetings to the citizens.


In the final days of 2018, it has once again been shown that the state leadership does not have the same retrospective standards nor similar projections of the processes that are planned. Unlike the Prime Minister, President Gjorge Ivanov in his congratulatory note noted that “the arrival of a new year sets off in each and every one of us a fresh hope, fresh expectations and a yearning for a more beautiful, happier and careless future. At the very end, we would like to forget this year and we wish the coming year was a year of fulfillment of all our wishes and dreams.


In the past 12 months, Macedonia actually lived in the spirit of those irreconcilable political beliefs about the priorities of the country and the ways of their realization. From that point of view, 2018 was not only a sensitive but also a very turbulent year – in which every two steps forward were followed by one step backwards.
The major achievements of the transition from spring to summer on the foreign political level in the last quarter of the year brought tough cross-party bargaining in the domain of domestic politics that seriously challenged the postulates on which basis the new government staff on Ilinden Street previously “overthrew the regime”. The pens with which this was achieved, with which later Prime Minister Zaev signed the agreement to overcome the decades-long dispute with Greece and the invitation for membership in the NATO alliance, were now put into operation to sign several legal solutions that provided amnesty for some of the cases that came out of the wiretapping scandal and the so-called bloody Thursday in parliament on April 27, 2017.
The developments that actually announced the departure of VMRO-DPMNE into opposition and the constitution of the new ruling line-up and which caused political earthquakes through the courts in the “Skopje unit” in the year that is coming to an end, were put as collateral for the so-called reconciliation in the name of the higher order.
Maybe it would all have been different if the unseen – until last summer – diplomatic offensive that took place in Macedonia, when diplomatic “bulldozers” who have never before set foot on the Skopje airport, came to the country, ended with greater mobilization of voters on September 30, that is, if the main opposition party, in coordination with the head of state, did not boycott the referendum on the name agreement, which put into question the further implementation of the Prespa Agreement, ie the adoption of the constitutional changes. Many things may have developed differently, and if former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski was put in prison in the Sutka penitentiary instead of fleeing justice to Hungary.
For the year that is coming to an end, it can be said that it has passed in the spirit of reconciliation. And not only in terms of the empty phrase that the Prime Minister cited from the parliamentary pulpit the day when the debate on constitutional changes began. In the spirit of closing old disputes, in previous months, the agreements on good neighborly relations with Bulgaria and the overcoming of the name dispute with Greece were reached and signed.
In the coming year, however, it will not be a long wait to see how the political moves that were drawn in 2018 will affect the Euro-Atlantic perspectives of the country, as well as the positions of the main actors on the domestic political scene. Macedonia enters 2018 with a bitter taste due to concessions that were made at the end of 2018. But with great expectations of the ongoing processes, as well as a feeling of uncertainty about the possibilities for their fulfillment. The chances of realization are realistic, as realistic as the forecasts that, although the biggest obstacles have been skipped, will not go further smoothly.
The first test is scheduled right after Christmas holidays. Constitutional changes are back on the agenda in the Parliament in its final phase before the Prespa Agreement is submitted for ratification in parliament in Athens. Then, it is likely that everything will be easier if after the debate in the legislature, which starts on January 9, the two-thirds majority for the change of the Constitution is confirmed, and if the Greek MPs show political will to approve the agreement that the governments in Skopje and Athens, and the international community, welcomed it as historic, despite the fierce reactions of the opposition in both countries.
The processes in the two countries’ parliaments will in effect determine Macedonia’s further position within NATO as one of the strategic goals of the state whose fulfillment, given the circumstances that follow, seems currently more certain than the tendency to start negotiations with EU. One of the reasons for this is the “clear” invitation to join the Alliance, which, after ten years in the waiting room, won Macedonia at the summit in Brussels, contrary to the conditional recommendation for negotiations with the European Union that was given to us at the same location and in the company of Albania, and in an atmosphere of skepticism towards enlargement by France and the Netherlands. When added to the fact that the chances are small for Macedonia to be in the focus of EU member states in the spring of 2019, in the coming elections for the European Parliament, it is expected that the new composition of the European Commission will be constituted, it is realistic to be cautious about the forecasts of the expected higher movement of the country in terms of EU integration. But this, however, is not impossible and achievable, and in large part depends on the implementation of domestic reforms, primarily in the judiciary, the fight against crime and corruption, the security-intelligence sector and the administration.
– In 2018 we focused on our goal – Macedonia to be a member of the European family. We know that in 2019 our focus must be on domestic reforms. To increase the opportunities for all citizens of our homeland. To improve the economy and to strengthen the standard of living, Deputy Prime Minister Radmila Sekerinska assessed.
She points out that it will be written in history that this is the year in which we stopped the isolation of our homeland and opened the doors to become an equal member in the most powerful military and political alliance.
The invitation for NATO membership is in our hands, we have successfully implemented the accession talks. Our spot at the alliance’s table has already been reserved, says Sekerinska.
In contrast, VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski will only remember 2018 as a year of dark and difficult times.


– Life has not been improved, the economy is not growing, there are no investments, healthcare and education are before collapsing. Instead we have scandals, affairs, ruined and kneeling judiciary, pressures etc. They want us to become apathetic because of the collective misery that they brought, notes Mickoski.
From his point of view, Mickoski, however, expresses lyrical optimism for the coming year.
– There will be a victory over darkness. The spark is already burning. And we all together will bring the dawn. The day will be brighter. This will be the year of decisions, but also a year of change, the opposition leader predicted.
An indicator of how Macedonia progresses in meeting the European criteria will of course be the regular presidential election this spring. Two years after the change of power on Ilinden Street, the outcome of the election, which will mark the end of Ivanov’s ten-year-long presidency, will be an indication of the mood of the citizens for the major moves that were undertaken in order to fulfill the strategic priorities of the country, but and for the great political concessions that were made in that direction. From the “behavior” of political factors, however, it depends to a large extent whether the election will end successfully, as well as whether they will interrupt the relatively short, but not idyllic stage of cohabitation, that is, whether the government coalition will take full control over the executive power in the country. Possible unsuccessful election, on the other hand, would be a new political instability and uncertainty, and possibly a prelude to new constitutional revision for changing the model for the election of the head of state, ie to move the election of the holder of this post to the Parliament, or for another reduction or deletion of the 40 percent turnout in the second round.

Aleksandra M. Mitevska