With honking car horns, celebratory gunfire and surging crowds, exuberant Macedonians celebrated the outcome of Parliamentary elections in which the ruling coalition was defeated overwhelmingly by more moderate parties.The largely peaceful election was itself a victory for this small southeastern European country just a year after violent fighting that pitted ethnic Albanian rebels battling for more rights against ethnic Macedonians who feared that the rebels’ real intent was to divide the country.One of the winners was a new party formed by Ali Ahmeti, the former leader of the ethnic Albanian guerrillas. Macedonians of both major ethnicities were cautious in assessing the impact of the election. They said they remained wary that, despite campaign pledges, politicians might find it hard to resist corruption, and added that the parties that lost power had also promised to run a clean government.About 840 international monitors patrolled the polling booths, backed up by 700 NATO troops. (LATWP)
