It seemed like November 15, 2004 was a day for major world leaders to quit. The number of US Cabinet officials resigning their jobs was the big news item both domestically and worldwide, and this overshadowed the resignation of Macedonian Prime Minister Hari Kostov. Ordinarily, this would not seem like an important event compared to what is going on in the rest of the world, and Macedonia has neither collapsed nor devolved into civil war. However, this resignation may be a harbinger of trouble and continued instability for that country (Country Profile).

Kostov resigned ostensibly because he was weary of single issue politics, namely ethnic politics–especially Albanian ethnic politics–preoccupying the country?s agenda to the detriment of economic, judicial, and other modernization reforms. To a certain extent, he is right, although his motivations are a little more extreme, as he stated that he would leave office if a referendum to reverse ethnic power sharing laws was defeated. This referendum was, indeed, defeated, although 1/3 of those who voted, voted for the referendum. Basically, in order to put an end to a seven-month guerrilla conflict by ethnic Albanian fighters, they agreed to disarm under the 2001 Ohrid Peace Accord in exchange for certain concessions. The Ohrid agreements called for some decentralization of government and local self-government, equal treatment of all ethnic groups, native language implementations, among other things. But, the issue that really inspired the referendum was the provision to revise municipal borders. This redistricting allowed ethnic Albanians, who comprise about one quarter of the population, to be the dominant force or majority in 16 out of 84 districts.