SKOPJE-- Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Macedonia's capital on Sunday, waving Macedonian and Albanian flags in a dramatic display of ethnic unity against a government on the ropes after months of damaging wire-tap revelations.
Crowds packed the central avenue in front of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's government office, angry over a flood of disclosures that the West says have cast serious doubt on the state of democracy in the former Yugoslav republic.
Police in camouflage uniform were in the basement of the building.
The crisis rocking Gruevski's nine-year conservative rule is the worst since Western diplomacy dragged the country from the brink of all-out civil war during an ethnic Albanian insurgency in 2001, promising it a path to European Union and NATO
membership.
A dispute with neighbouring Greece over Macedonia's name has halted its Western integration, and in that time critics say Gruevski has tilted to the right, stoking nationalism and monopolising power in coalition with a party of ethnic Albanian
former guerrillas.
Since February, he has faced a wave of embarrassing revelations against him and his ministers, contained in taped conversations that appear to expose tight government control over journalists, judges and the conduct of elections.
Opposition Social Democrat leader Zoran Zaev says the tapes, which he has dubbed "bombs", were made illegally by the government, part of a mass surveillance operation targeting 20,000 allies and opponents alike, and leaked to him by a
whistleblower.
REUTERS
