Skopje Prepares For The Protest Rally
Skopje – With increased police presence and metal riot barriers cordoning off the streets that run around the Parliament of Macedonia, the capital of Macedonia is awaiting the start of the protest rally, scheduled to start at 20:00 hours in front of the Parliament.
The contested and disputed proposal provides for the integration of several rural, Albanian dominated municipalities to integrated into the Municipalities of Struga and Kicevo, respectively, as well as the City of Skopje. The move should result in completely new demographic stricture in which Albanians will climb over the Ohrid Agreement census of 20% for minority languages to be recognized as second official languages, and indeed, in the case of Kicevo in Struga, Macedonians will actually become a minority on local level. The Government proposal met with strong opposition from all layers of the society. It seems that everybody, from factory workers to members of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, have stood up in attack of the proposed changes in the territorial map of Macedonia. While many of those attacks are substantiated with evidence that many of the new municipalities have no chance of providing the services to their citizens, the majority of protests follow the ethnic line. Namely, even the President of Macedonia and the Minister of Local Self-government admitted that the ethnic moment played the major part in the design of the new municipalities (and not just for the three cases mentioned above), and cited the provisions of the Ohrid Framework agreement on local self-government and linguistic rights as the basis for the agreement the members of the Government coalition reached. The critics of the agreement point out that the decision will, most certainly, contribute to further estrangement of the two communities, to ghettoization of Macedonians and Albanians, and, should we follow the advise of the nationalists, even to slow displacement of Macedonians from the Municipalities with Albanian majority. While the Ohrid Agreement provides for the application of safeguards for the minorities on local level – the so-called Badentaire’s minorities – the situation in some municipalities, such as Tetovo, do not put favourable light on the implementation of those safeguards, as the minorities are usually marginalized, with almost no say in the decision-making processes. As it is now, the Government is faced with the greatest crisis since they took the power. The citizens, and we speak of Macedonians predominantly, are as mad as they can be and they accuse the Prime Minister and the Government of treason. That the situation is much worse than the official position of the international community in Macedonia (optimistic almost by default), show the events of Struga of last Thursday, when the Minister of Defense Vlado Buckovski managed to escape untouched after the police had to extract him from the siege of the local offices of the ruling Social-democrats, which lasted for more than seven hours. Now, the situation is dangerous for two reasons. First, the Government has adopted a very non-transparent policy of adopting decision behind closed doors, away from the public scrutiny, and without consultations with the public or any resemblance of public debate. The second problem lies with the ethnic divisions existing and prevailing in Macedonia. While the politicians downplay it, the increased talk of “treason” of “selling Macedonia”, which the Government answers with accusations of nationalism and anti-Western positions, demonstrate that the rift between the two communities is just too great to be ameliorated by decisions to install bi-lingual street names and the use of minority languages in the public institutions. One illustrative example: last Friday, the rebuilt Old Bridge in Mostar was officially reopened amidst wishes and claims that it will accelerate the reconciliation process in the divided city on Neretva. As if the bridge would immediately heal all the trauma that three years of bloody war created in the citizens of Mostar. That is, I am afraid, too much to ask from a simple (albeit beautiful and really spectacular) peace of masonry. As Ivan Lovrenovic said in his editorial in the last issue of “Dani” Magazine, “… if the bridges were the answer, there are already several of them in Mostar itself… I (Lovrenovic) am afraid that the bridge will only be reduced to the essence of emptiness….” Nonetheless, as the start of the rally approaches, Skopje is growing restless. You can rarely listen to any subject of conversation other than the rally itself. The Government is faced with two choices: either it will revoke its proposal, and will reevaluate its positions, or it will persist in its insistence that “this is the only way that will take us closer to Europe.” They are more concerned, as it is, with what the EU and NATO will say about the proposal (and they obliged by condoning it promptly) than with what their own constituencies want. Unfortunately, the latter may be the spark that the popular dissatisfaction needs to erupt into a full fledged revolt. Earlier today, I passed by a group of senior citizens that found refuge from the burning Sun under the lime trees across the street from the Parliament. Watching the riot-police standing in the open, without the luxury of the linden tree shadows, one of them commented that “they (the Government) have never been this scared of a rally before.” I crossed my fingers and walked on. It may turn out that the rally will go in perfect order, that the provocations will remain unmet, and that we will wake up tomorrow one danger behind us and one day the smarter. My fingers are still crossed. |
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