Northern Macedonia 2014

Yearbook 2014

Northern Macedonia (until 2019 Macedonia). Before the presidential election in April, disagreement within the government arose. North Macedonia population in 2020 is estimated at 2,083,385. The dominant right-wing party VMRO-DPMNE wanted incumbent President Gjorge Ivanov as a candidate, while the coalition partner, the Albanian BDI, opposed it because Ivanov was considered too Macedonian nationalist. The inconvenience resulted in the announcement of a new election to Parliament.

In the presidential election, Ivanov in the second round won 55% of the vote over Stevo Pendarovski, who was the Social Democratic SDSM candidate.

In the parliamentary elections held at the same time, VMRO-DPMNE again became the largest party. The SDSM, which lost some mandates, accused the government of cheating, voting and blackmail. Foreign observers pointed to shortcomings before and during the election. Weeks of turmoil followed and SDSM decided to boycott Parliament. Despite this, VMRO-DPMNE formed a new government with BDI in June and Nikola Gruevski took up his fourth term as prime minister.

According to topb2bwebsites, six Albanians were sentenced in July to life imprisonment for murdering five Macedonian fishermen in 2012. According to the court, the murders constituted a “terrorist attack”. About 20 police officers and several protesters were injured in connection with protests that erupted when the judges fell. Six Albanians were sentenced a few weeks later to three years in prison for their role in the violence.

An attempt to include a ban on same-sex marriage in the Constitution failed. The ruling right-wing VMRO-DPMNE, which advocated the ban, failed to get the two-thirds majority required in a second vote in Parliament.

Eighteen people, including several former employees in the intelligence service, were sentenced in October to up to 15 years in prison for spying on other countries. What other countries that were intended did not appear.