Then prime minister designate, Branko Crvnkovski (the country's current President whose legitimacy is contested by the Gruevski government), vowed to learn from his party's (SDSM) past mistakes when they venally ruled the land until 1998. In a sudden and politically-motivated resurrection, the high court began scrutinizing the "Okta" deal: the opaque sale of the country's loss-making refinery to the Greeks in 1999. Heads will roll, promised both the election victors (the SDSM) and their Western sponsors. Nothing happened. The country's current Governor of the Central bank and then minister of finance, Petar Goshev, a former socialist high-level functionary known for his integrity, announced that his top priority would be to eradicate corruption by instituting structural and legal reforms. His newfound socialist partners - he headed a center-right outfit - found this bizarre ardor unpalatable and promptly kicked him out of office. Four years later, with Georgievski relegated to the political wasteland, Crvnkovski ensconced in the presidential suite, and his successor, Buckovski a resounding failure, Gruevski's ascent in 2006 was all but secure. It was the SDSM's turn to crumble acrimoniously amid a virulent contest for its leadership. It has never recovered and Macedonia has had no viable opposition ever since. Macedonia's post-electoral euphoria faded, in July 2006, into arduous coalition-building negotiations replete with arm-twisting by the worried representatives of the "international community". The country's new VMRO-DPMNE Prime Minister, Nikola Gruevski (36), excluded from his government the party that won the majority of Albanian votes because of its roots in the much-hated Albanian NLA, National Liberation Army, the instigator of the 2001 near-civil-war. Albanian factions clashed in a chilling reminder of the country's inter-ethnic fragility. To add to Macedonia's precarious standing, its greenhorn Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Milososki, engaged in intermittent - and utterly avoidable - spats with its neighbor and biggest foreign investor, Greece, virtually guarantee delayed accession to both NATO and the European Union, the much ballyhooed strategic goals of the current administration. Milososki adopted a similarly belligerent and ill-informed stance against Bulgaria, another flanking polity and the newest member of the coveted European club. Where the government claims great strides is in its uncompromising stance against all forms of malfeasance and delinquency in both the public and the private sectors. From the army to various municipalities, scandals erupt daily in an atmosphere often bordering on a frenzied, media saturated, witch-hunt. Gruevski is alleged to have rejected a bribe of 3 million euros (c. 4 million USD) offered to him by a Serb firm. His government embarked on highly publicized campaigns against illegal construction (the "urban mafia") and other festering nests of corruption.