To boycott: Everyone can, but nobody should!

Part of the citizenship considers the referendum as a matter of consciousness and conscience. Will it do so by voting against or by boycotting the vote is a matter of freedom of thought and political action

Ilo Trajkovski

These days, with the start of the campaign, the political and legal controversy surrounding the referendum on changing the name of the state has sharpened. Academist Vlado Kambovski takes the credit for this. In the shadow of his indisputable gigantic opus, he expressed a stance that shoved the boycott discourse from the political to the criminological level. According to him, the boycott is, above all, a felonious act, ie a criminal act, because calling and organizing a boycott of a state measure or policy is a crime, not a legitimate political action! The boycott is recognized as a political right and freedom for every citizen, but at the same time, it is emphasized that by practicing it, the practitioners are facing a prison sentence of up to three, or up to five years!

This attitude, by those to whom this message was addressed to, rightfully so, interpreted it as intimidating the citizens to not even think about a boycott. After the argued reactions of the affected, the academist corrected and specified his position, alleviating the threat. However, he remained within the framework of the initial normative political positions – for the Treaty and for stigmatizing people who are considering a boycott. This stance regarding the issue of the meaning and limits of the right to boycott, in democratic politics, is placed with the rigid apologetic interpretations of the same. They are backed by representatives of the government, its spokesmen and uncritical supporters.

According to them, the boycott of the referendum is an attempt to demolish the Republic of Macedonia! The failure of the referendum due to a boycott or due to vote against the Treaty presents itself as a conscious or unconscious endangerment of the survival of the Republic. In this direction, boycotts are most often represented and demonized as pro-Russian “elements”. The boycott of the referendum is not permitted as a form of political participation but is interpreted as a felonious, ie a criminal project and activity, punishable by law.

The attached evidence is fairly simple and unilateral – the state or its legal authority (in this case the Parliament) has made a lawful decision and it must be respected. Such argumentation reminds me of the boycott by some of the ethnic Albanians in the Republic for the 1991 census. On that occasion, another domestic prominent expert on the subject, publicly defended his position that all who boycotted the census and thus did not fulfill the “lawful” decision of the competent state body should be punished with an appropriate prison sentence! And then I wondered, as I do now – is there a justified boycott, or crime, as qualified by the two top experts? How would their views be seen by a Macedonian Mahatma Gandhi?

We find the answer to this paradox in the modern theory of the state and especially in the theory of citizenship and the related concept of civil disobedience. Within this framework, the boycott as a phenomenon is a legitimate form of non-violent political action. For example, Gene Sharp, for example, whom some justifiably call Machiavelli on nonviolence, determines the boycott as a legitimate form of non-cooperation. It is a break in the usual social, economic or political cooperation of the citizens with the state or any of its bodies or with some economic actors.

The boycott, as well as civil disobedience, really call into question the normal functioning of the state. But the key question for understanding their controversial legal nature is the question of what is “normal” in a given social context.

Studies show that the boycott (social, economic or political) follows after extreme and traumatic situations. When one of the parties in a given situation is either really overpowering and does not allow space for the institutional channeling of alternative policies or is so ignorant that it does not bother to “talk” with it – for example, in cases of usurpation of institutions and total control. When the state or its organs take over acts that are unfeasible to some parts of the public and in which the public or any significant part of it does not trust. When the laws and the state authorities in charge of their implementation contradict common sense.

And this has happened to us on several occasions with this government, which is the main promoter of the upcoming referendum. Once this happened with the manner of passing a law that envisaged the extension of the official use of the Albanian language; another time with the defense of corrupt state officials as irreplaceable; the third time with rigged tenders and numerous other cases. These are, it seems to me, examples from the arsenal of the politics of post-truth – everything is passing, nothing is solid and, as the people in Bitola, or Prilep, and I am sure others, would say: “A good man will go back on his word”.

In such situations, part of the citizens feels obliged to challenge them as a matter of consciousness and conscience. Will it do so by voting against or by boycotting the vote is a matter of freedom of thought and political action. A boycott as a democratic benefit is a more radical alternative to contesting the Treaty. One is really challenging the principles of the rule of the majority and of the rule of law as the basic postulates of liberal democracy. Precisely because of this contradictory nature, contemporary criminal law theory as a key element in the defense of criminal prosecution and punishment of the actors of such acts, emphasizes the concept of a prisoner of consciousness.

From that perspective, the unilateral and rigid legal interpretation of the boycott only as a violation of the “lawful measure of the state” loses the fact that the Treaty with Greece causes dramatic, and for many, traumatic changes and states in the awareness and identity of many citizens. Its content and consequences – including the referendum – is handled by every interested citizen individually. A friend, for example, tells me that she knows that the Agreement brings many risks to our identity and, above all, to our collective integrity and dignity.

“I know they lied many times, but I do not think we have other option and therefore, ‘I will turn a blind eye and I’ll vote YES’!”

She’ll turn a blind eye and vote Yes! And what if she opened her eyes and look at herself in a mirror!? Will she then be free from the prison of conscience? Or will she, and many others, build their voice and themselves into another strong collective trauma?

It will very much depend on the way the so-called. trauma career groups (such as the representatives of the government, intellectuals, and among them especially the academics, others) have been running the campaign just launched. With statements like, for example, the one by the academist, the campaign turns into a process of traumatization of the referendum.

In this process, the main speakers are the groups that, thanks to their oratory and other symbolically-communicative capacities and positions, conceive the meaning of the referendum and the treaty as traumatic events. In relation to them, one should know that they have their own interests for such a presentation of the boycott and referendum. To them, the attitude for or against or the boycott of the referendum is not a question of conscience but of a calculation. And they have the right to that. But they have no right to demonize those who have estimated that from their personal perspective, it is better for the collective to vote against or to boycott. At such turning points, efforts should be made to strengthen the respect for each other’s differences.