On July 28th "European Voice", the Economist's sister EU-affairs newspaper, published my profile of Nikola Gruevski, Macedonia's prime minister. With the odd adjustment for style, here it is.
MACEDONIANS either love him or loathe him. To his detractors, Nikola Gruevski, who was confirmed as prime minister for a third term on July 28th, is corrupt, a populist, a ruthless Machiavellian and an enemy of a free media. “No, no, no,” say his supporters. He is as clean as a whistle, modest, the scourge of tax-dodging tycoons and a family-values man to his core.
The divisiveness of the dominant figure in Macedonian politics is not simply a matter of domestic concern. Macedonia has been a candidate for membership of the European Union since 2005, was close to civil war a decade ago, and has been embroiled in a bitter conflict with Greece over its name for almost 20 years.
Born in 1970, Mr Gruevski was brought up in a family that was neither privileged nor poor. His father worked in furniture and design; his mother was a nurse and, after his parents’ divorce, it was she who brought him up. When he was four, she went to work in Libya, like thousands of other Macedonians, and took him with her.
That was a brief episode in a childhood in which the young Gruevski dreamt of being a doctor, a footballer or a cosmonaut. One thing he says he did not think about much was politics—or, for that matter, the story of his paternal family.
His father was born in northern Greece; his grandfather, mobilised by the Greek army, was killed fighting the Italians in Albania after Italy’s invasion in 1941. Then, in the wake of Greece’s civil war, like thousands of other Slavs in Greek Macedonia the family fled north to what was then Yugoslav Macedonia. Maybe this is an emotional component of the story of the struggle with Greece? No, says Mr Gruevski; until recently he was never that interested in the story. Nor, he says, did he feel especially moved when he visited the ancestral village in 2001.
The young Gruevski’s family did not talk much about politics, with one exception. Jordan Miljakov, his uncle, “talked about politics all the time”. Mr Mijalkov was the representative of a Macedonian textile firm in the then Czechoslovakia. When Yugoslavia began collapsing, Mr Gruevski thought of joining his uncle and going to film school there.
He opted, instead, for economics at home. And Mr Mijalkov became the first interior minister in the government that led Macedonia to independence in 1991.
Mr Mijalkov’s memory is cherished by many. It was he who ordered the seizure of Yugoslav army documents, which meant that the army could not mobilise Macedonians to fight in Croatia. Soon afterwards, he was killed in a suspicious car accident in Serbia.
The incident did not force Mr Gruevski into political activism, but he did hang out with members of the nationalist party that he now leads, whose name is so long that even its initials are laborious: VMRO-DPMNE.
After university, where he dabbled in amateur dramatics and boxing, Mr Gruevski entered the nascent finance sector and was the first person to trade on Skopje’s stock exchange. In 1996, he entered politics, becoming a local councillor in the capital. The next year he began writing on economics. This was how he first made a name as an economist. In 1998, he was minister of trade, and in 1999 became minister of finance.
Today, say the name "Gruevski" and one might think of the giant bronze statue of Alexander the Great that has just been unveiled in Skopje, or all the other statues of saints and politicians that are being erected every week as part of a policy of boosting national identity. But a few years ago it was different. This was the man who began deregulating the economy, introduced VAT, a flat tax and restituted property taken by the communists.
In many respects, Mr Gruevski was, for his party, the right man in the right place at the right time. With communism gone and Macedonia independent, the technocratic, English-speaking Mr Gruevski was just the type the party needed to refresh itself. But few would have expected the economics-focused whizz-kid to outsmart his opponents, come to lead his party, and win three elections in a row.
The first years after he became prime minister in 2006 were characterised by growth and a focus on the economy. Then came the 2008 Bucharest NATO summit at which Greece effectively vetoed Macedonia’s accession, because of the name issue. “I was shocked,” says Mr Gruevski. From then on, the focus changed, a shift perhaps also encouraged by the world economic crisis. Unemployment now stands at 31.7%. Mr Gruevski played the national card and won.
Many Macedonians have literally wept with joy to see the statue of Alexander, but for Macedonia’s socialist opposition Mr Gruevski is the devil incarnate.
Take the case of A1 television. A1 was a beacon of the free media, they say, and now it has been virtually killed off for its criticism of Mr Gruevski. Three newspapers from the same group have just closed their doors. Nonsense, says Mr Gruevski’s camp: Velija Ramkovski, the owner, never paid his taxes and then used A1 and its journalists as a human shield when raided by the police.
Some non-partisans are unconvinced. “When it comes to power he is a boxer,” says one source, “and he won’t stand in the way of people taking out opposition media. He is vindictive and when it comes to the media he is totally selective when it comes to implementing the law.” For such delicate issues, the prime minister needs someone he can really trust, they say—and they point out that the country’s security chief is Mr Gruevski’s cousin, Saso Mijalkov, the son of Jordan Mijalkov.
And Greece? After the Bucharest summit, Mr Gruevski launched a case against it at the International Court of Justice. But, he says, the chances of a deal in this complex issue are “much better than before”. He gets on with George Papandreou, Greece’s prime minister; he and Papandreou’s predecessor, Kostas Karamanlis, detested each other.
He has had more success with Macedonia’s ethnic-Albanian population, which makes up about a quarter of the country’s 2m people. Ten years ago, Macedonia teetered on the brink of an all-out civil war pitting ethnic Albanian guerrillas against the security forces. Now Mr Gruevski is in coalition with Ali Ahmeti, the former leader of those guerrillas. The new government has an Albanian minister of defence and deputy prime minister in charge of European integration.
Both Albanians and Macedonians grumble, but as one EU official remarks: “We’d kill for a government like that in Bosnia.” The price for this second coalition, though, was somewhat distasteful: four war-crimes cases against Albanians have been set aside.
“Nikola is just Nikola”, chortles a friend. Ordinary people can identify with him, he is like the bloke next door—and he is literally that, because he disdains his official residence, preferring to live in his small flat, with his wife and two small children. And, notes the friend, to win so many elections he must be doing something right, after all.
