[by Michele Boselli and Konstantin Adzharov]

Yesterday we've been in Macedonia for a short trip in order to meet our Albanian comrades who take care of our activities in Kosova too.

We've seen our member Arben Xhaferi, chairman of a wing of the Party for Democratic Prosperity which split itself from that party, largerly representative of the ethnic Albanians in Macedonia.

Arben has been elected MP in recent elections in Macedonia: just in his constituency he defeated Muhamed Halili, member of Rp General council and former chief of the "official-governative" PDP, now led by Abdurahman Aliti, re-elected, who results, obviously, member of the Radical party...

There are about 20 Albanian deputies in the new Macedonian parliament (total 120 seats); out of them, ten are from the PDP-Aliti, and ten from the PDP-Xhaferi and other various PDPs...

The distribution of the other seats, you already know from the coverage of the Macedonian elections in conference babel: the governmental coalition led by re-elected president Kiro Gligorov and made up by three parties heirs of the old Communist League (social-democrats, liberal-reformists and socialists), won 88 seats, a huge majority, for two main opposition parties (nationalist VMRO-DPMNE and the new Democratic Party of our member Petar Goshev) boycotted the elections and gave up to take part to the second round on October 30th, blaming the ex communist coalition of gerrymandering the first round on October 16th.

The most common political analysis about these results is that the confirmation of president Gligorov and premier Crvenkovski will allow a stability which should lead to a normalisation in relations with Greece (very hostile to Macedonian name and flag); on the other hand, it was quite baffling the electoral process of Macedonia's new democracy, at least not exactly transparent like the plexiglass boxes in which voters put their ballots, and suspicion fed because of the unbelievable delay in releasing the results by the electoral commission; however, the international observers, nicknamed "international voyeurs", said that it's ok...

Nevertheless, it is not for sure that a new government (anyway almost certainly led by Crvenkovski) will match with the winning majority coalition: given the PDP-Aliti's ambition to continue staying into government, and the government itself wish to keep them inside, the only opposition party will be the PDP-Xhaferi; but consider this: a government with a 90% parliamentary majority, this is not polite...

Thus could happen that a party among the winning coalition will take the role of fake opposition: maybe the liberal-reformists of Zoran Krstevski (member of Rp); however, the social-democrats of Nikola Popovski and Liupcho Popovski (the latter member of Rp), have got enough seats to rule alone - though that's unlikely -, with help from some other Popovski: it is not difficult to find Popovskies in Macedonia...

This time we went to Macedonia with Konstantin's car, sparing money on rent-a-car, and he was also helpful in avoiding me to be injailed when, coming back, I tried to force the border after a 5 km queue of trucks, which queue is the best example of Balkan foolishness in bureaucracy.

Konstantin blames me to throw away the party's money, 'cause I spent DM 20 in gasoline in Macedonia, while in Bulgaria it costs half. In fact, he's guilty for that, for his car drinks too much...