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Wh y We Lo s t – Th e M a c e don i a n C a s e
ernment protected the environment and preserved the cultural and historical heritage in
the country by excavating and renovating the ancient city of Ohrid, an important city in
Slavic culture.
Social issues were also addressed by the VMRO government. Thousands of apartments for
young couples were built; the health sector was improved; the situation of the pensioners
improved and public servants received a salary increase. Generally, the VMRO govern-
ment did a lot for the citizens of Macedonia and was on the right track, but corruption
connected to the prime minister and his close associates, as well as the crisis of 2001,
negatively affected the government.
The fight against corruption was short-lived. When VMRO came to power, it started nu-
merous investigations concerning the crimes of the SDSM government. This was a com-
plete failure because the public prosecutors and courts dismissed most of the accusations
as unproven. This was to be expected, since the court system was built under another
political system. The only case in which the VMRO government accused one of its own
officials was the case of the minister of defense, Ljuben Paunovski, which is still in the
labyrinth of the judicial system.
The government did not succeed in publicizing the reforms or the prospects for good
economic growth they promised. It operated in a hostile media environment – one that
got worse immediately after the parliamentary elections, when SDSM was able to use
its resources to indirectly create media close to it. To improve its public relations tac-
tics, there was an attempt by the government to start a network of NGOs linked with
its party members that could promote the policies of the government, but this was not
achieved during its term in office. No right-of-center or conservative think thank, insti-
tute, center, or party foundation was founded to present and support party policy. Only
a humanitarian foundation was formed by the prime minister’s wife, and it was man-
aged by a closed circle of associates that lacked transparency, leaving it open to regular
attacks by the media.
The lack of professionalism and mistakes that many VMRO officials committed in the
government were mostly due to inexperienced personnel and difficulties in acquiring
loyal administration personnel, councilors, intelligence and security service members or
good spokespersons to explain and promote government policies.
During VMRO’s term, the rate of unemployment decreased, but most of these new jobs
were created through governmental firms and the state administration. They were mostly
filled by party members and often overstaffed. Still, unemployment in Macedonia re-
mained high, and this irritated people without any party affiliation and caused generally
bad publicity.
The corruption issue, besides the mishandling of the crisis in 2001, was one of the crucial
reasons for failure of the government. The obvious attempt of Prime Minister Georgievski
to create a counterbalance to the pro-Communist financial oligarchy failed because of the
unsophisticated ways of buying firms and real estate and the privatization of the rest of the
firms in Macedonia, as well as the absence of any sense of responsibility toward the party
and the government’s future. During its term, the SDSM oligarchy succeeded in privatiz-
ing 90% of the firms in Macedonia, including the most profitable ones, and there was no
