The election campaign in Macedonia shows how divided the country is. The situation is particularly bad in the campus of the Macedonian political parties, whose leaders keep exchanging harsh criticisms and insults. On the other hand, the leaders of the Albanian political parties show that they can at least talk to each other, diplomatic sources from the EU say about the campaign for the early general elections in Macedonia.

In such a situation of mutual insults and absence of debates that would help the citizens understand the positions of the leaders to the most important issues in the country, according to the Brussels diplomats, it s very important that the elections are carried out by international standards and are given a pass from the OSCE/ODIHR, Dnevnik reports.

“Your country has already fallen behind in the implementation of the EU agenda and if ODIHR says that the elections were no by standards, that would be a further regress on your path to the Union. And no one wants you to stay where you are but to move ahead,” they caution.

According to the same senior sources, the elections will be important to overcome the problems that Macedonia had in 2010 and to achieve the reform success of the previous 2009. In their view, Brussels expects the political leaders to demonstrate maturity although they cannot be sure how the leaders of the parties would act if, for example, the score margin is narrow, how willing they would be to accept the results and, as in some European countries, form a blanket coalition.

The Brussels diplomats do not want to speculate as to what will happen to the visa free regime for the Macedonian citizens yet expect the Macedonian authorities to take measures to stop migrants from seeking asylum abroad and improve the living conditions in Macedonia.

They say they cannot predict if visas would be reinstated, yet add that if the protection mechanism has been introduced as a measure then it can certainly be put into practice as well. Officials from Brussels have already said they have been surprised by the statements of certain government ministers that the Government guaranteed the visas would not be reinstated.