When the presidential elections were held in November 1999 it was with the help of disciplined supporters of the DPA that Trajkovski secured 52 per cent of the vote.Georgievski may have picked Trajkovski, then a relative political lightweight, to ensure that the new president would not interfere with his work as prime minister. While a lawyer, for much of the 1990s he acted as a part-time foreign policy adviser to Ljupco Georgievski, the leader of Macedonia’s main nationalist party, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE). He took his religion seriously, serving as lay leader of the United Methodist Church Council in Macedonia.Trajkovski studied law at Skopje University, and subsequently specialised in commercial and employment law. In a country where – traditionally – Macedonians are predominantly Orthodox Christians and Albanians overwhelmingly Muslims, his Protestant faith represented something of a neutral middle ground. A little over a year into his presidency, in early 2001, ethnic Albanian guerrillas launched a six-month campaign to secure more extensive rights for their community. Trajkovski – a calm figure who showed a willingness to compromise – played a key role in bringing the different, and often hostile, sides together to reduce tension and produce a degree of consensus. He used his limited presidential powers to the full to ensure that his steadying influence would bear fruit.Trajkovski’s success in building bridges between the majority Macedonians and the ethnic Albanians, who account for nearly a quarter of the population, was helped by his religious affiliation as a member of Macedonia’s tiny Methodist community.
Moreover, there were allegations of ballot-rigging surrounding the vote in some ethnic Albanian-inhabited areas which led to several weeks’ delay until Trajkovski could be sworn in as President in December 1999.But, while lacking experience, Macedonia’s youthful President confounded most of his critics by his resilient performance under pressure during his country’s greatest crisis since its independence was proclaimed in 1991. His election was secured with the votes of Macedonia’s ethnic Albanians – a point that created suspicion among the majority Macedonian community. Boris Trajkovski, whose term as Macedonia’s President has been cut short by his death in a plane crash in Bosnia-Herzegovina, had an inauspicious start to his presidency in 1999. He was only 43 when he was elected head of state of the former Yugoslav republic. He had come from comparative obscurity to occupy the highest position in the Macedonian state.
And he succeeded the towering figure of Kiro Gligorov, independent Macedonia’s founding president, and a seasoned politician nearly twice Trajkovski’s age.There were other problems Trajkovski had to face. Boris Trajkovski, politician: born Strumica, Yugoslavia 25 June 1956; Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs 1999, President 1999-2004; married (one son, one daughter); died near Stolac, Bosnia- Herzegovina 26 February 2004. Years passed – but what they did there no one knew, those summer children long since safely dead.Andrew Rosenheim. Behind the old wood-shed wild iris was in blossom, white and blue, but what those proud ones did there no one knew, though some suspected there were one or two who led the others where they would be led. Having published a novel, Homeboy, to glowing reviews in 1990, he was killed in the same year with his girlfriend after driving a motorcycle into some bridge pilings in New Orleans.
