ABC News informed about the elections in Macedonia. They quote a story by the Associated Press, which starts like this:
Shootings that led to at least one death and allegations of ballot fraud forced elections officials to suspend voting in at least 17 polling stations Sunday, marring the start of Macedonia’s early parliamentary election.
A friend of mine, who is in Macedonia today, wrote me, when I pointed him to the AP story that he was not sure in the objectivity of the Greek journalists, who reported for the AP, and he added:
There are over 5,000 (not a typo) election inspectors in the country and more police presence than ever before in the Macedonian history. Any one that misbehaves will be caught and prosecuted. There are just too many witnesses. The missing ballot box by the way was for some 400 ballots. Unfortunate, to be sure, but not decisive. That village will just participate in the runoff on June 14th. There are about 1,776,000 people registered to vote.
So, the question is: is Associated Press objective, or not?
From what I hear, it may not be as objective, as one would have expected.
Let’s see in a few hours what the results of the elections will be. In my personal opinion – the sooner Macedonia solves the country name problem with Greek, the better; they will join NATO and the European Union, and the internal problems will not play such a big role (hopefully).