The nationalist Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, an expert in constitutional law and retired professor, won the presidential elections in North Macedonia this Wednesday and will become the first woman to head the head of state of this Balkan country, independent since 1991. The arrival to the power of the nationalists, who have also won in the legislative elections, but without an absolute majority, can make the poor Balkan nation’s path towards the European Union difficult.

Siljanovska-Davkova, candidate of the right-wing VMRO-DPMNE party, won with 64.84% against the current president, the social democrat Stevo Pendarovski, with 29.29%, according to the count of 81.27% of the votes.

Her election campaign slogan is “Macedonia, proud again,” inspired by her name, Gordana, which in Macedonian means “proud.”

Rejects using “Northern” in the name of the State, which had to change its name in 2018 to lift Greece’s veto on its entry into NATO and the European Union (EU) in 2019, with an agreement that was unacceptable to it. , and painful for many Macedonians. North Macedonia’s bumpy road to the EU began in 2005, when it received candidate country status, but was blocked for years by Greece over a name dispute.

“As a citizen, but also if I become president, in my public events I will never use ‘Northern’, only Macedonia. For me it is a legally and politically still open matter,” she insists. VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski also refuses to recognize the new official name, which may reignite tensions with Athens. In the legislative elections, with 81.27% counted, VMRO-DPMNE obtains 42.80%, the governmental SDSM adds 14.73% and the main party of the Albanian community, DUI, achieves 14.38%. Therefore, the nationalists must look for a partner to govern in a coalition.

Albanians make up about a quarter of the population, and Albanian parties have been part of most coalition governments since North Macedonia was formed following the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991.

The return to power of the right-wing opposition in the Balkan nation of 1.8 million may fuel tensions with neighboring Greece and Bulgaria, which is blocking North Macedonia’s accession negotiations to the European Union over ethnolinguistic issues. The president-elect rejects Sofia’s condition to include the Bulgarian minority in the country’s constitutional preamble, in order to lift the blockade.

Born in Ohrid, Siljanovska-Davkova graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Skopje and received her doctorate from the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. In the 1990s she was part of a social democratic government as a minister without a party and without a portfolio.

In the outgoing legislature Siljanovska-Davkova was an independent deputy in the VMRO-DPMNE parliamentary group. She is married to a jurist and her two children are also from the same professional background.

North Macedonia’s bumpy road to the EU began in 2005, when it received candidate country status, but was blocked for years by Greece due to a dispute over the country’s name. The shift from left to right in the Balkan country was fueled by voter anger at the slowness of the process and persistent corruption, which slowed its bid to join the European Union.

VMRO-DPMNE was in power until 2017, before being removed for alleged corruption, and some voters expressed concern that its nationalist tendencies could harm relations with its EU neighbors Greece and Bulgaria, and its candidacy for the EU.

In 2001, NATO brought North Macedonia back from the brink of civil war during an ethnic Albanian insurgency and promised faster integration into the EU and NATO. The country joined NATO in 2020.