Eurasia Press & News
With the region facing two important elections – in Moldova and Bosnia – and still digesting the implications of the US election, our selection of articles this week ponders the possibilities of continuity or change in more than one way.
On November 15, Bosnians will turn out to vote in local elections across the country. Quite how many will turn out is anyone’s guess. Fears of infection with COVID-19 may keep many away from the polls. So will emigration, which has displaced a large number of Bosnian voters across Europe.
For the country’s politicians, the stakes are high in the coming elections. This is particularly the case in some of the country’s biggest cities. Yet aside from health concerns, there are also serious fears of fraud in the elections. We analyse in more detail what lies ahead.
Moldova heads to the second round of its presidential elections this weekend, after a first round which produced a somewhat surprising result. In the first round Maia Sandu, the leader of the Action and Solidarity Party, PAS, won 36.2 per cent of votes to incumbent Igor Dodon’s 32.6 per cent.
Yet many eyes are on Renato Usatii, the leader of Our Party and a populist mayor of the Balti, who won 17 per cent of the vote, coming third and turning into the kingmaker of this election. In the 2016 elections, Usatii played a key role in securing Dodon the presidency. This time around, he may be ready to swing behind Sandu. But will his voters follow him?
Following the resignation of Turkish Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, the Turkish lira rallied against the US dollar gaining 5 per cent in value. This alone said much about the low level of trust in the fiscal and economic policies pursued by Albayrak, while the Turkish economy has tanked over the last few years.
Yet this was no ordinary ministerial resignation. Albayrak was Erdogan’s son-in-law, seen to be implementing the Turkish President’s economic ideas, and in many ways untouchable. Indeed, Turkish media seemed fearful of reporting his resignation initially, until it was confirmed by the Presidency. We take a look at what happened to this once ‘rising star’ of Turkish politics.
It seems that North Macedonia does not have much luck with its neighbours. After being blocked by Greece in its EU and NATO accession hopes for more than a decade, the country ultimately agreed to change its name in order to appease its southern neighbour.
Now, to the east, Bulgaria is threatening to block Skopje’s EU accession process, again over issues that go to the heart to the Macedonian identity. In his comment for Balkan Insight, Tomica Stojanovikj argues that the Bulgarian move is not just bad for the two countries in question, but also the future of the EU as well.
Like the US, Slovenia has its own Twitter obsessed leader, Janez Jansa. Like Trump, Jansa also seems to be a firm believer in the ‘deep state’ that is out to destroy him and finds Twitter the perfect platform through which to peddle his conspiratorial view of the world.
In his often entertaining analysis, Alem Maksuti compares the two leaders, as well as Jansa’s political origins, in order to explain and understand how the Slovenian Prime Minister has turned into the figure that he is today. Getting inside his logic and way of thinking is no small task.
As with much of the rest of the world, the peoples of the Balkans watched with great interest to see who would become the next President of US in the first days of November. In the process, many of them learned more about the ins and outs of the US electoral system and politics than they understand about those in their own countries.
While different national groups had their preferred candidates, the question now turns to what the apparent election of Joe Biden will mean for the region. Expectations (and fears) are running high on both sides. Yet, as Vesko Garcevic argues in his opinion piece for Balkan Insight, no one should expect him to solve all the region’s problems. On the contrary, this will still be down to those in the Balkan countries themselves.
