20,000 Protesters March in Macedonian Capital Skopje

27 July 2004

Over 20,000 people gathered in front to the Macedonian Parliament last night (Monday, July 26) to protest the proposed changes in the territorial organization of Macedonia.

The protests, which proceeded in spite of the torrential rain that fell last night, were organized by the leading parties of the Macedonian opposition, and featured speakers from all the organizers.

The opposition accuses the Government of “treason” after its decision to integrate several rural municipalities with dominant Albanian population with the cities of Skopje and Struga, respectively, a move they believe will “contribute to a further alienation of the two dominant ethnic groups in the country and will, ultimately, lead to federalization and division of Macedonia.

The protests were organized in a tense atmosphere, with the Police worried that the crowd may try to repeat the events of last Thursday in Struga, where Vlado Buckovski, Minister of Defense, barely escaped the angry mob that besieged his party’s (Social-Democratic Union SDSM) office in that town on the Ohrid Lake.

The streets surrounding the Parliament were closed for traffic and cordoned off for 24 hours prior to the start of the rally, and huge numbers of ordinary and riot-police, as well as fire brigades, were stationed near the Parliament.

The protests, however, passed in perfect order, without a single incident. The speakers at the rally called on the Government to heed on the advise and the wishes of the Macedonian people and review its proposal for changes in the Law on Local Self-Government.

As Nikola Gruevski, the leader of the largest opposition party VMRO-DPMNE said in his address, “… we are tired of being called nationalists and being accused of anti-European sentiments… We are not against the decentralization, but we are against the decentralization that is based on ethnic criteria and will contribute to the division of the country.”

Meanwhile, earlier in the day, the Parliament started the debate on the proposed changes, with the opposition’s intention being to stall and prolong the debate as much as possible, to allow for the campaign to collect 150,000 signatures for the petition to call for a referendum on the issue of local self-government and the territorial organization.

The Government is vowing to stay the course they chose with the proposal, and will push for the changes to the adopted before the Parliament summer pause starts.