Macedonia Opposition Unlikely to Bridge Ethnic Gap

Despite their common goal of toppling the long-standing Prime Minister, Nikola Gruevski, opposition parties from the ethnic Macedonian and Albanian blocs appear unlikely to form a joint front in the coming general election, political observers say.

"This kind of cooperation between opposition groups is natural - and may come late," former Macedonian MP Mersel Biljali said, referring to recent meetings between opposition leaders from both ethnic bocs.

"However, for a more concrete form of cooperation, they need to forge a joint platform and come out with a joint offer," Biljali added.

Talk of a pre-election opposition coalition that would for the first time unite ethnic Macedonian and Albanian parties has intensified since a series of meetings between opposition leaders.

Over the last week, the largest opposition party, the Social Democrats, SDSM, has intensified contacts with two new Albanian opposition parties, Uniteti [Unity] and the movement for reforms in the Democratic Party of Albanians, DPA.

The outcome was a joint stand on the issue of snap elections in which they said they would not accept the ruling parties' insistence on elections on April 24 without first seeing a thoroughly cleaned-up electoral roll and reforms in the media to create a level playing field.

Political analyst and former MP Naser Ziberi says that while the contacts and the unified stand on the date of the elections is a step in the right direction, "the two sides are not ready for more serious cooperation for now" because "their platforms are in large part based on ethnic issues and, on that subject, they have completely opposing views".

In two-and-a-half decades of multi-party politics in Macedonia, no pre-election coalition...