Facing the demons

Ljupco Popovski

In an unusually short time, Republic of Macedonia again faces its demons – the nationalist patriotism, the ethnic gap, the unfinished transition, the powerlessness of the institutions, the enormous expectations of the wrath and the most important: the name issue. Perhaps someone will notice that the solution to the name issue is not part of this, because it is instrumented from the outside to break the fragile pride of a small nation. But the demonization of the negotiations justifies the cohesion of the citizens here and encourages the most radical populist elements.
Protests over the weekend in Macedonia and in many other world cities can be judged by their numbers, flaming messages or nationalist iconography, but they should not be underestimated or ignored. Especially not in the two main Macedonian parties, and in Athens. The big question is what did the authorities in Athens do all these years? An unstable state on its northern border, where the traffic flow of the Balkans passes through, with the possibility that it can collapse in its safety? Or through a fair deal with Macedonia, Greece to restore the role of Piemont in the Balkans, whose experiences and economic resources will be a model for other nations. It is unclear why Athens, when the windows opened up for new possibilities for a solution to the name, suddenly raised the bar in the stake to bring the authorities in Skopje before a disappointing decision that a solution is not possible, however. And, they will have to spend another 20 years.
How else can one explain the statement of the Greek President, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, in which he explained how the change in the Macedonian constitution should look – to accept a name that would not refer to ethnicity outside the borders of Macedonia, nor to the language outside of those borders, which would cause minority rights. These words of Pavlopoulos drew out the essence of Greek demands. Pavlopoulos has been at the peak of Greek politics for decades, he was the interior minister in right-wing governments, and paradoxically, was proposed as president by the left-wing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Greek presidents, by their custom, have always been radical from the governments in Athens, because they have the freedom to participate in the drafting of the strategy, but not to be cited as part of government politics.
The delay in Nikos Kotzias’s visit to Skopje, with the draft agreement being prepared in Athens, is a clear sign that optimism before and after the meeting in Davos suddenly began to melt as a snowball in the sun. And they met Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev and Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov with the harsh fact that only optimism cannot solve the name dispute. Despite Zaev’s spectacular statement that the government is ready for a name with a geographical determinant. A statement that no Macedonian politician has publicly given since the address of Kiro Gligorov to the Assembly in autumn 1992. Probably it is facing the reality, that Macedonia’s starting positions in these negotiations are a dozen steps below as a result of the rigid politics towards Greece in the last ten years.
The new leader of VMRO-DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski, despite the constant repetition of the phrases about the “political terror” that happened in Macedonia and the “criminal-tender government”, the other day at the assembly of the Union of Women of the Party said that “a new generation of people is needed, “who will eventually defeat old corrupt politicians” and retire them. And that the “mathematically precise” policy of the new VMRO-DPMNE was not possible without “international connections and friendships. That’s how the modern world works. “That “modern world” for a half a year unisonally reiterates that Macedonia must find a solution to its name in the negotiations with Greece. The public should tell the new leadership to put nationalist slogans in the name dispute under the ice, and that, instead of publicly, quietly supports the government in these negotiations.
And paid a certain price for it. What was prompted from the outside, from the diaspora, is now rolling around the edges of the political arena and slowly entering its center. The first well-attended protest in front of the headquarters of the EU mission and in front of the Parliament, and then the mass gathering on the main Skopje square, showed that in Macedonia, one mass of citizens is being assembled whose guiding is nationalism in all its forms. From a protest for the detainees of the April 27 events, through complete disagreement with the law of languages ​​to the main thread linking all these people – a possible deal with Greece. VMRO-DPMNE publicly fled from these protests, although it may have helped the organization in some way through secondary channels (along with several announcements by its prominent members). The impression from the protests is that there is ongoing restructuring of the right-wing spectrum from the political scene. A careful play on the name issue of the new leadership of VMRO-DPMNE (especially after the travel of Hristijan Mickoski in Brussels and the United States) is due to the danger that the party lost a significant part of the electoral structure, which for years and years was obliquely inclined. The “Tvrdokorni”, who are the most elaborate in these protests, have already stepped on the road paved by European populists. Although they may do it more instinctively than with an elaborated ideology, the essence is the same – the Macedonians first (everyone else should play in the second league) and an open affection towards Moscow. In the Macedonian case, it is even more explicit – the newly-bundled United Macedonia (with a completely identical logo as Putin’s United Russia) included in its management structure the leader of “Tvrdokorni”. This party emerged from the People’s Movement of Macedonia by Janko Bacev for several years on the periphery of the Macedonian political scene (although won a respectable 20,000 votes in the local election), but now with the expansion of the space from which the new contingents can vote out the following elections can easily enter the parliament.

The left spectrum does not have such a significant overhaul (Levica is a weak, uncoordinated group with loose ideology), but the populist part of this campus is more withdrawn into an apathetic illegality, stimulated by the disappointment of the new era, and is already considering how to gauge the sentence for SDSM in the next election. An important part of this group given by SDSM at the local election now feels abandoned, as there were expectations for quick results. These expectations rely on promises of revolutionary change without knowing the real depth of the mud in which Macedonia is stuck, and without assessing the complicated relations in the government coalition, which is very often like a crew riding in two different tracks.

Politics is brutal – not a few months, but only a week can make a dramatic twist in perceptions and what looks like a solid granite terrain (“life for all”) can suddenly turn into an unfamiliar swamp. The initial fuse for dealing with the demons of Macedonian citizens is the negotiations on the name and intensification of the rhetoric of excessive demands, and the intransigence of Athens. Macedonia, in a certain way, is in the time before the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008. Optimism with which the Government is overcome, and in which citizens want to believe, can turn into a great disappointment if the negotiations with the EU and NATO membership remain unattainable this time, despite the concessions that Zaev publicly disclosed, putting it the entire political project at risk. At this point, nobody knows what would be enough for Athens, and whether it consciously encourages the return of populist and nationalist demons in Macedonia. And, at the same time, it stepped one step at a time before the Greek nationalists. Does this mean that the two countries will dance the same dance with two different types of music, as it was after 2008? But let’s see – maybe sensible politics will overcome stereotypes and obsession with the past.