Macedonia will hold a presidential election on 22 March. The incumbent, Branko Crvenkovski (SDSM/ZMZ), is not standing for re-election. Recall that since August 2006 there has been cohabitation between the president and Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski (VMRO-DPMNE) and his VMRO-DPMNE, DPA, NSDP, DOM coalition (since July 2008, just VMRO-DPMNE, DUI).

One report suggests that the VMRO-DPMNE candidate, Georgi Ivanov, is leading the polls. A real twist is that an ethnic Albanian candidate, Imer Selmani, from the new New Democracy party (if you see what I mean) is within a whisker of being able to contest the second ballot ahead of the social democratic candidate (the candidate of the incumbent president’s party).

Anyway, Balkan Insight has a nice set of resources about the election, including candidate profiles etc.