The Mild Spring

Petar Arsovski

Spring is here, and, as in the past few years, the Macedonian political scene has seemingly woken up as well. The cafes are packed with people having their daytime coffee, the city’s traffic mess is on the rise, and so party seats were shaken up too, with announcements of a “hot spring”. I do not know how many announcements of “a hot spring” there have been already, but the real indicators are still on the side that, at best, we should expect a slight “softening”, but not a rise of temperature on the political scene. On the contrary, we should expect a period of stabilization of the existing processes, not dramatic or tectonic shifts.
First, I think that the forecasts for the inevitable crisis and disappointment from the government are overemphasized. In this period, one should expect some normal market correction after the initial euphoria of the victory against Gruevski, in which I expect the rating of the government to be reduced, as the public adapts to the new political reality and consolidates the positions between the high expectations, and in terms of moves in terms of dynamics, real capacity, complications, and opportunities for a political breakthrough, but it is not a signal for a turn. On the contrary, while it is normal to slow down optimism and unreserved confidence in SDSM, this process is transient and oscillatory. As the euphoria was too pronounced, now disappointment is too prominent. The market will be re-corrected over the next period, as the government will react to the first criticism, and will position itself with a new strategy, as the first results of the Government moves will appear. Therefore, it is too early to expect that the SDSM will immediately fall into crisis.

At the same time, VMRO-DPMNE is also far from a new big rating scale. Although the first messages from the party are confusing and sometimes contradictory, however, altogether speaking, despite the attempts for short crime dramas, the situation will tend to stabilize the existing position. The situation inside the party is not matured so that they can make a huge and tectonic breakthrough with the ratings, and therefore I think that the announcements of mass protests in the spring will not have the result that VMRO-DPMNE hopes. Namely, I think that the opposition cannot hope for major shifts in relation to SDSM, until the processes of “spring cleaning” and discontinuity of previous policies are completed. There are more problematic axes that have to be harmonized before they can go back to the political market with a new image and a new chance. First, they need to consolidate and find their own place those who the current leader was at the congress competition. Although there are many variants how to solve it, from isolation to entry back into the party, and we do not know in which direction this process will go, however, without a conclusion there will not be internal unity. Furthermore, the second axis that must be resolved is this bargaining between the Russian-nostalgists and the new “yuppie-westerners”. The party has to make a clear strategy and an agenda there as well, before it can hope for a breakthrough. The third axis is the inevitable return to participation in the political discourse – there are already some announcements of stabilization, participation in parliament, support of reform laws, and the like, and the interpellation is only political folklore, an attempt to conceal the right move of accepting reality. In the end, the outcomes of the proceedings against the previous powerful VMRO-DPMNE are also important – this resolution will really create a catharsis and release the current leadership from the need for palliative care of a whole wing in the party. But in total, however, I think that in the coming period the opposition will have to deal with itself, and it is too soon to be expected that they will soon become a real threat to the government.

Hence, the announcements for quick early elections are not real, because there are no substantial tectonic movements in the positions that would mean a twist: neither Zaev, nor Mickoski have any prospects for making big differences in the result; In addition, the international community will oppose the elections before the resolution of this phase of the name negotiations and reforms process, so nothing dramatic should be expected in this field. At the same time, neither the name process nor the process of the name, I believe, will have any tectonic shift in this period, because the first phase of easy and fast symbolic breakthroughs ended, we met, we hugged, but now we have to negotiate, which is the harder part of the work. That means that as the more difficult issues progress, the process will slow down until it matured to a mature stage for international intervention, but I do not believe it is going to happen in the next 3-4 months. So we should not expect too much on this field as well.

At the same time, dealing with the ghosts of the past at home, symbolically represented through the trials of cases from the previous period, will be settled in a continuous, but far from dramatic dynamics. Although things in this section may be moving in the surest proper direction, however, neither the speed nor the severity of the judgments will be sensational, and will not leave too much room to heat the atmosphere. And other reforms at home will also be pushed through a minefield, which administratively, financially, and politically, and that, along with the slow capacity building of the new government, will mean minimal progress in the coming period.

The only real tectonic change in the first half of 2018 would be getting a date for negotiation. This date, as it seems, would rather happen due to good foreign policy and lack of other international community agenda, than to successful domestic reforms. Hence, the date for negotiations, if we get one, will be at least conditioned by some additional steps, which will at best mean a half-victory. So, all is quiet on the Western front.

Finally, I think that the critical public will slowly adjust their expectations, and will sit in for long political processes, therefore the pressure on the elites will be reduced, so it is more likely that a greater drama will take place over where to go on vacation, than what will happen to the state in this period. I’m thinking about Croatia myself, to “refresh the aura a little bit”.