Later next week, also voters from two European states will go to polls

On April 5, when the Moldovans vote for a new parliament, the voters from Macedonia will pick a new president. A day earlier, on April 4, so will the Slovakians do, Info-Prim Neo reports. The March 22 elections in Macedonia appear to have satisfied widespread calls for voting to proceed peacefully. The vote was pronounced by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe as having met international standards, a conclusion that drew praise for Macedonia from the European Commission and from Washington. The second round of presidential elections will see Georgi Ivanov, a member of prime minister Nikola Gruevski’s conservative VRMO-DPMNE’s party up against Social Democrat Ljubomir Frckovski. In the March 22 first round, Ivanov got about 35 per cent of the votes compared to 20 per cent for Frckovski. Incumbent president Ivan Gasparovic will be challenged by Iveta Radicova in a run-off presidential election in Slovakia on April 4. Gasparovic got the most votes in the first round on March 21, but with close to 47 per cent of the vote, his lead was just 8.7 percentage points, and in any case was short of the 50 per cent required for a decisive victory in the first round. Radicova, a sociology professor, is backed by a coalition of centre-right opposition parties. While the post of president is a largely ceremonial one, debate in Slovakia currently is dominated - perhaps inevitably - by economic questions. Unemployment hit a 29-month high of 9.72 per cent in February.