Macedonia Ruling Party Draws Thousands to Election Rally

The centre-right ruling party organised buses and vans to bring in its supporters to the capital. Dressed in red t-shirts, the traditional color of the party, they filled the square in front of the government building.

The Prime Minister and VMRO DPMNE leader Nikola Gruevski said he was confident that his party would triumph over the opposition Social Democrats.

Promising the “continuation of government reforms aimed at economic and social recovery”, Gruevski dedicated most of his speech to slamming his opponent, opposition leader Branko Crvenkovski.

Gruevski called Crvenkovski “a criminal” and “outdated politician”, and said he was responsible for the "criminal transition" during the 1990s.

The prime minister also touched on the sensitive subject of the name dispute with Greece, reiterating his stance that the government would not change the country’s name under pressure from Athens.

Along with Gruevski, who is the party frontrunner for the first electoral district in the capital, the party's top candidates from the other five electoral districts also addressed the crowd.

Centre-right members of the European Parliament were special guests at the rally on Sunday.

The gathering comes as the campaign for the general elections slowly draws to a close ahead of the June 5 poll. The main opposition Social Democrats will hold their final rally on June 3 in the north-eastern town of Kumanovo.

The campaign so far has been marred by frequent, though minor incidents.
 
The opposition parties have complained of constant intimidation from ruling party supporters and have accused its activists of demolishing their local headquarters in a number of places.

The early elections will determine who will lead the country for the next four years. Various opinion polls put the ruling VMRO DPMNE, which has been in power since 2006, ahead of the opposition Social Democrats.

The Social Democrats, meanwhile, hope to garner the votes of those unsatisfied with the ruling party’s efforts to improve the economy and well-being of the people and to speed up the country’s bid to join the EU and NATO.

In the country’s large ethnic Albanian bloc, opinion polls put the junior ruling Democratic Union for Integration ahead of its rivals.

Since Macedonia’s independence in the early 1990s, it has been customary for the top ethnic Albanian party to be invited to join the government formed by the winner in the Macedonian campus.