Some words for the weekend: Elections, elections, elections

You know that one of my favourite topics for this blog are the European Parliament elections.

But for the next three weekends, my eyes will be on the three South-eastern "M"s: Macedonia, Montenegro, Moldova.

This weekend, there will be presidential elections in Macedonia (22 March; see also A Fistful of Euros), next weekend we will see early parliamentary elections in Montenegro (29 March), and in the third week we'll get parliamentary elections in Moldova (5 April), which in the latter case also means presidential elections because the Moldovan president is elected by the parliament.

Beside the fact that all these elections are crucial for the further democratic development of these three European countries, the almost parallel elections put a lot of political weight and logistical pressure on OSCE/ODIHR and other international organisations like the Council of Europe, which have to co-ordinate three election observation missions at the same time.

All interim reports regarding the three elections are published on the ODIHR homepage, and I can only recommend reading them.

When it comes to me, I will now start to enjoy my last weekend in this country, meet friends, enjoy life, and don't care (much) about politics and administration, international organisations, and whatever else kept me busy all these weeks.

Have a nice weekend - and see you next week, everyone!