Nikola Gruevski

[Bill77]

Don't take this as i am some kind of Gruevski fan. I admit i once was but he has lost me since.

But on this occasion, credit must be given where its due. Although its not enough for me to jump on his band wagon again, but its a beginning and encouraging.

Gruevski: No retirement benefits for ONA...

Deal could not be achieved for DUI's request to have retirement benefits for the people who attacked security personnel and civilians in NW Macedonia in 2001.

PM Gruevski, stood to his response from five years ago that "there will be no retirement benefits for anyone who waged war against their own country".

There had been requests by DUI to make Albanian a second official language in the country, however this was not agreed by PM Gruevski.



MINA finds that one of the things the ruling parties agreed on is the Macedonian flag must be flown in every corner of the country. The flags of the minorities must be smaller than the Macedonian flag where the minorities are a majority. The Macedonian flag must be bigger by at least 1/3 in those areas.



Also, DUI has the responsibility to compensate/return Macedonians and Serbs who were forced out from their homes during the 2001 conflict.

The Macedonian Secret Service (UBK), the security Bureau (BJB) will continue to be led by the same people appointed during the previous VMRO-led government.

Despite few differences of opinion between the ruling coalition, a deal was achieved in forming the structure of the new Government and cabinet members.
http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/18599/1/

[Risto the Great]

The flag thing is a step in the right direction.
But rest assured any "broadcastable" decision has any number of compromises in the back rooms that we don't know about.

[Bill77]

The flag thing is a step in the right direction.
But rest assured any "broadcastable" decision has any number of compromises in the back rooms that we don't know about.

My favourite would have to be "there will be no retirement benefits for anyone who waged war against their own country". Come to think of it, it stops short. It should have continued to say,

"Infact those that waged war against their country will not only not receive retirement benefits, they will be hunted down dead or alive, if alive, convicted and jailed for murder amongst other serious crimes"

Regarding your second point, i am starting to wander myself, Are there strings attached?

[Risto the Great]

My favourite would have to be "there will be no retirement benefits for anyone who waged war against their own country".

"Instead, we will reward them by letting them run the country" ... is the missing text.

[Bill77]

"Instead, we will reward them by letting them run the country" ... is the missing text.

"Then they can receive retirement benefits".

Its starting to look clearer now mate. It's the way they package it.

[Vangelovski]

There had been requests by DUI to make Albanian a second official language in the country, however this was not agreed by PM Gruevski.

The part was a complete load of BS. Gruevski should concult the FA and the constitution - Albanian already is an official language.

Good re the retirement benefits.

Same old re the flag.

[Pelister]

The part was a complete load of BS. Gruevski should concult the FA and the constitution - Albanian already is an official language.

Good re the retirement benefits.

Same old re the flag.

There is a reference to the Albanians waging a war against "their country". This really bothers me. The Albanians who waged a war don't think of the Macedonian Republic as "their country" or "their state". These are at the core Albanian nationals, not Macedonian nationals. The language used by Gruevski, suggests he is trying to brush this simple fact aside. I can't stand him, but unfortunately he is the 'best' of a seriously rotten bunch.

Also, the fact that a people who number about 25 per cent (at the most) are requesting that 'Albanian' be made an official language, should be a worry to everyone. Gruevski by bringing this fact to the attention of the Macedonian people, is attempting to present himself as a "patriot" and as the individual politicians holding the Albanian nationalist surge back. Its a PUBLIC RELATIONS stunt. If Gruevski was serious about defending our interests, he would stop the negotiations immediately and begin the process of gaining our admission to the United Nations - and informing the Macedonian people we have never really been 'blocked' in the first place.

[Soldier of Macedon]

Vangelovski posted this on another thread, but I think the whole articles deserves to be cited here also, given that it relates to Nikola Gruevski and his treachery against the Macedonian people:

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/macedonia-passes-amnesty-for-hague-cases

After a day-long discussion, 63 legislators from the ruling parties supported the motion, while 29 in the 123-seat parliament voted against it.

This means that prosecutors will now have to close the books on the cases, which the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, ICTY, returned to Macedonian courts in 2008.

The cases involve alleged crimes by ethnic Albanian guerrillas, some of whom now hold senior posts in the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, a partner party to Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s governing VMRO-DPMNE.

The opposition Social Democrats charge that granting them effective amnesty is part of an unethical deal struck between the ruling parties in the formation of the new government after the June 5 elections.

Gruevski’s party won the elections. His critics now accuse him of making immoral concessions to gain his partnersʼ support and stay in power.

The ruling parties insist they were merely rectifying a mistake from the past, as the cases were not supposed to be re-examined in the first place.

The DUI, which proposed dropping them, argued that the cases were nullified by the 2001 amnesty law that was passed shortly after the signing of a peace deal granting more rights to the Albanian community.

VMRO-DPMNE legislators who supported the motion said that it closes a painful memory from the past, and allows the country to move forward.

The four cases date back to the 2001 armed conflict in Macedonia between Albanian insurgents and local security forces.

The ICTY took over jurisdiction of five war-crimes cases from Macedonia the following year, but returned an indictment in only one. The other four were sent back to Macedonia in 2008, and the public prosecutor’s office said it would re-examine them.

However, citing the amnesty law passed in 2001, Albanian politicians in the country demanded that the cases be closed.

Only one of them, involving the alleged torture of construction workers, reached trial. But it was postponed numerous times.

Another case was connected to the water supply being shut down in Kumanovo, while a third charged the insurgentsʼ leadership with command responsibility in actions that resulted in war crimes.

The fourth case charged former insurgents with the alleged kidnapping and murder of 12 ethnic Macedonian civilians. Their relatives spent the entire day Tuesday in front of the parliament, angered by the proposal to drop the cases. Today they are meeting government officials, demanding a meeting with Prime Minister Gruevski and an explanation from him.

Do you think he will give them the courtesy and explain why nobody will answer for the death of their relatives?

[julie]

I smell another compromise...

[Soldier of Macedon]

The compromise has already been made. I'm just not sure what the Macedonian side gained from it.

[Volk]

the same animals are lawlessly and indiscriminately terrorizing the population with impunity...

And why wouldn't they? Nice work Gruevski...

[VMRO]

Divisive Macedonian

Curriculum Vitae


Nikola Gruevski, as seen by Marco Villard.

1970: Born, Skopje

1989-94: Studied economics, Bitola

1998: Founder and president of Brokers Association of Macedonia

1998-99: Minister of trade

1999-2002: Minister of finance

2003: Adviser to the Serbian minister of finance

2003-: Head of VMRO-DPMNE

2006- : Prime minister


Macedonians either love him or loathe him. To his detractors, Nikola Gruevski, who was today (28 July) scheduled to be confirmed as prime minister for a third term, is corrupt, a populist, a ruthless Machiavellian and an enemy of a free media. “No, no, no,” say his supporters. He is as clean as a whistle, modest, the scourge of tax-dodging tycoons and a family-values man to his core.

The divisiveness of the dominant figure in Macedonian politics is not simply a matter of domestic concern. Macedonia has been a candidate for membership of the EU since 2005, was close to civil war a decade ago, and has been embroiled in a bitter conflict with Greece over its name for almost 20 years.
quote
Few would have expected the economics-focused whizz-kid to outsmart his opponents, come to lead his party, and win three elections in a row
quote

Born in 1970, Gruevski was brought up in a family that was neither privileged nor poor. His father worked in furniture and design; his mother was a nurse and, after his parents' divorce, it was she who brought him up. When he was four, she went to work in Libya, like thousands of other Macedonians, and took him with her.

That was a brief episode in a childhood in which Gruevski dreamt of being a doctor, a footballer or a cosmonaut. One thing he says he did not think about much was politics – or, for that matter, the story of his paternal family.

His father was born in northern Greece; his grandfather, mobilised by the Greek army, was killed fighting the Italians in Albania after Italy's invasion in 1941. Then, in the wake of Greece's civil war, like thousands of other Slavs in Greek Macedonia, the family fled north to what was then Yugoslav Macedonia. Maybe this is an emotional component of the story of the struggle with Greece? No, says Gruevski; until recently he was never that interested in the story. Nor, he says, did he feel especially moved when he visited the ancestral village in 2001.

The young Gruevski's family did not talk much about politics, with one exception. Jordan Miljakov, his uncle, “talked about politics all the time”. Mijalkov was the representative of a Macedonian textile firm in the then Czechoslovakia. When Yugoslavia began collapsing, Gruevski thought of joining his uncle and going to film school there.

He opted, instead, for economics at home. And Mijalkov became the first interior minister in the government that led Macedonia to independence in 1991.

Mijalkov's memory is cherished by many. It was he who ordered the seizure of Yugoslav army documents, which meant that the army could not mobilise Macedonians to fight in Croatia. Soon afterwards, he was killed in a suspicious car accident in Serbia.

The incident did not force Gruevski into political activism, but he did hang out with members of the nationalist party that he now leads, whose name is so long that even its initials are laborious: VMRO-DPMNE.

After university, where he dabbled in amateur dramatics and boxing, Gruevski entered the nascent financial sector and was the first person to trade on Skopje's stock exchange. In 1996, he entered politics, becoming a local councillor in the capital. The next year he began writing about economics. This was how he first made a name as an economist. In 1998, he was minister of trade, and in 1999 became minister of finance.

Today, say the name ‘Gruevski' and one might think of the giant bronze statue of Alexander the Great that has just been unveiled in Skopje, or all the other statues of saints and politicians that are being erected every week as part of a policy of boosting national identity. But a few years ago it was different. This was the man who began deregulating the economy, introduced VAT and a flat tax, and restituted property taken by the communists.

In many respects, Gruevski was, for his party, the right man in the right place at the right time. With communism gone and Macedonia independent, the technocratic, English-speaking Gruevski was just the type the party needed to refresh itself. But few would have expected the economics-focused whizz-kid to outsmart his opponents, come to lead his party, and win three elections in a row.

The first years after he become prime minister in 2006 were characterised by growth and a focus on the economy. Then came the 2008 Bucharest NATO summit at which Greece effectively vetoed Macedonia's accession, because of the name issue. “I was shocked,” says Gruevski. From then on, the focus changed, a shift perhaps also encouraged by the world economic crisis. Unemploy-ment now stands at 31.7%. Gruevski played the national card and won.

Many Macedonians have wept with joy to see the statue of Alexander, but for Macedonia's socialist opposition Gruevski is the devil incarnate.

Take the case of A1 television. A1 was a beacon of the free media, they say, and now it has been virtually killed off for its criticism of Gruevski. Three newspapers from the same group have closed their doors. Nonsense, says Gruevski's camp: Velija Ramkovski, the owner, never paid taxes and then used A1 and its journalists as a human shield when raided by the police.

Some non-partisans are unconvinced. “When it comes to power he is a boxer,” says one source, “and he won't stand in the way of people taking out opposition media. He is vindictive, and when it comes to the media he is totally selective when it comes to implementing the law.” For such delicate issues, the prime minister needs someone he can really trust, they say – and they point out that the country's security chief is Gruevski's cousin, Saso Mijalkov, the son of Jordan Mijalkov.

And Greece? After the Bucharest summit, he launched a case against it at the International Court of Justice. But, he says, the chances of a deal on this complex issue are “much better than before”. He gets on with George Papandreou, Greece's prime minister; he and Papandreou's predecessor, Kostas Karamanlis, detested each other.

He has had more success with Macedonia's ethnic-Albanian population, which makes up about a quarter of the country's two million people. Ten years ago, Macedonia teetered on the brink of an all-out civil war pitting ethnic Albanian guerrillas against the security forces. Now Gruevski is in coalition with Ali Ahmeti, the former leader of those guerrillas. The government has an Albanian minister of defence and deputy prime minister in charge of European integration.

Both Albanians and Macedonians grumble, but as one EU official remarks: “We'd kill for a government like that in Bosnia.” The price for this second coalition, though, was somewhat distasteful: four war-crimes cases against Albanians have been set aside.

“Nikola is just Nikola”, chortles a friend. Ordinary people can identify with him, he is like the man next door – and he is literally that, because he shuns his official residence, preferring to live in his small flat, with his wife and two children. And, notes the friend, to win so many elections he must be doing something right.

[Zarni]

Yet another pinhead bastard

"Slavs in Greek Macedonia"

What and whom are Slavs?

[makedonche]

Unbelievable Stupidity!

[Soldier of Macedon]

Macedonians either love him or loathe him. To his detractors, Nikola Gruevski, who was today (28 July) scheduled to be confirmed as prime minister for a third term, is corrupt, a populist, a ruthless Machiavellian and an enemy of a free media. “No, no, no,” say his supporters. He is as clean as a whistle, modest, the scourge of tax-dodging tycoons and a family-values man to his core.

Wrong. To me, he is a plastic patriot that is negotiating the Macedonian identity with foreigners by looking for a "mutually acceptable solution", defacing the Macedonian identity by changing our symbols/names or avoiding them altogether, and honouring a treacherous agreement which rewarded the actions of terrorists. Unfortunately, this perspective doesn't get the exposure it deserves, not from Macedonian media, and not from foreign clowns like the one who wrote this article.