A Political Cosa Nostra

Under pressure, after opposition MPs walked out of parliament demanding a debate on political violence, the authorities consented to a debate on their personal safety, and the incidents which occurred during the last municipal elections.

AIM Skopje, October 13, 2000

"Citizens are frightened by the methods used, and are considering whether to participate in the elections at all," said Stole Popov, parliamentary delegate from the ruling coalition, member of the Democratic Alternative, and a film director, at a parliament session still in progress, referring to "the events in local elections, particularly violence in the three election rounds, including the safety of MPs". Popov said that it is "alarming to see political culture hit the rock-bottom, with intimidating rhetoric degrading the fiber of our society," adding that the use of "racketeers" (browbeaters) by some political parties is unacceptable. "Some call them activists, but they are mercenaries, a feature of the mafia. It's like the Wild West, parties must not be allowed to create such an atmosphere," Popov said. He also stated that affairs in Macedonia had taken a course similar to that of the criminal underworld.

The parliament session was preceded by the majority's refusal, under party orders, to discuss the attacks on MPs from the ruling VMRO-DPMNE coalition who deflected to the newly-formed VMRO-VMRO. Non-issues were also declared to be the Party for Democratic Prosperity's "white book," as well as the incidents in the first round of local elections in western Macedonia, where Albanians constitute the majority. (That triggered the PDP to completely withdraw from the elections.) Further, a demand from the Social Democratic Union (SDSM) for a debate on its reports on the latest incidents in those elections was turned down, forcing the majority of opposition MPs to boycott parliament, until the authorities changed their stance.

An "honorable compromise" was reached, though, for the ruling majority and especially the speaker, Savo Klimovski. A debate on the incidents was initiated, but Klimovski's proposal to form a committee to investigate the incidents was also passed. The compromise, if it works out, will certainly follow a well-known pattern: the opposition will be allowed to heatedly expound on the incidents for a few days, offering ample evidence of the involvement of the authorities in the events, the media will play the whole thing down, while the committee and the relevant authorities will completely dilute the investigation.

Let us recall the events that preceded this. First, prior to local elections, where the authorities expected to lose a part of their voters, six MPs from the ruling VMRO-DPMNE stunned the public by deflecting to VMRO-VMRO. This was a blow to the very foundations of the ruling coalition, unable to find a suitable response to the pressure from the united opposition which was claiming that the local elections were a referendum on the authorities' record and called for early parliamentary elections. "The people happened," and the VMRO-DPMNE deflectors were subjected to home sieges and stonings in their towns, amidst shootouts in which no one was, fortunately, hurt.

Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski also could not resist the pressure. His famous statement that he would personally propose early parliamentary elections by the end of the year if the opposition received a mere 10 percent more votes than the ruling coalition and the Democratic Alternative (the Democratic Party of Albanian was added later). The first round passed unexpectedly amid armed conflicts in western Macedonia, in villages with predominantly Albanian populations. Clashes between "sympathizers" of the two Albanian parties led to the wounding of seven, among whom young Fatmir Jakupi from the village of Kondovo, died ten days later. The opposition PDP decided to withdraw from the elections after the incident. Its caucus compiled a "white book" on the incidents in which many names of witnesses and culprits were mentioned.

More incidents occurred in the second round, when a war literally broke out between rival "reketari" (a term used for men hired to "monitor" elections). Both VMRO-DPMNE and SDSM blamed each other's reketari for numerous incidents such as raiding voting stations, stuffing ballot boxes and violating the sanctity of ballot boxes. The situation culminated on Sunday, while votes were being counted in Ohrid, in a shootout in which an 18 year-old sustained a gunshot wound to the head, which fortunately, was not lethal. Many people were beaten in the havoc as cars were overturned and demolished.

Numerous observers of the elections, both domestic and foreign (the For the Citizens coalition managed for the first time to rally domestic non-government organizations and around 1700 observers to cover almost every voting station, including many OSCE-sponsored observers) stamped the elections as the worst in Macedonia in the last decade. Even foreign diplomats in Skopje openly expressed discontent with the elections. People here say, with irony, that the elections were worse than in Albania and Serbia.

The latest issue of the Forum bi-weekly carried a cover story on the growing conflict between the authorities and media. The paper claims, not without reason, that the conflict might leave someone seriously hurt as the authorities have strong opposition and "bitter enemy" in the majority of Macedonian-language media outlets (Albanian outlets are another sad story -- at least judged by relations between them and "their" governing party.) But, concretely in this case, the media are actually sparing the government! The debate in parliament on the serious incidents, insisted upon by the opposition, is practically being neglected by the media, which have been focusing one attempting to silence the deflectors from VMRO-DPMNE and the incidents in local elections that have so far been marred by violence. It is as if they have become tired, now when it is time to score; one gets the impression that the events that have contributed greatly to reducing Macedonia's democratic rating are actually not news. Some analysts view this as a sign that people have become "callused" to the Macedonian political scene, an attitude that could be summarized by something along the lines of "nothing can surprise us anymore," therefore, one should not get to upset. They say that the media's "lethargy" is one of the first indications of the people giving up and letting things "run their own course." That explains the resignation of analysts, who are attempting to assess Macedonia's decade-long stroll into transition, on the tenth anniversary of multi-party elections in Macedonia. It seems that those who believe that Macedonia has done little on that road to democracy and transformation into a open society are in majority.

Iso Rusi

(AIM Skopje)