TURNING POINT

AIM Skopje, 26 March, 1997

Two speeches, one domestic declaration, one European and one American recommendation, as well as another Macedonian-Greek meeting, these are the most essential elements which have brought the Republic of Macedonia back to the top of interest of the international public in the past ten days, in connection with the "barrel of gunpowder" and various scenarios for a new centre of a crisis or war in south-eastern Europe. And again, the best indicator for this is the unusually large number of foreign journalists in Macedonia.

This time it turned out again that different declarations and recommendations, as a rule, mean nothing, or rather do neither harm nor damage. That is what happened with the Declaration on Interethnic Relations adopted by the Macedonian parliament, but also with the declaration with which the European Union expressed concern about the situation in this country. The recommendation of the State Department had the same destiny.

The turning point in Macedonia and the possible quick redirection of the accumulated negative energy in the positive direction, occurred after a speech of Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski given to the deputies about organized crime, and his promise that he would solve the problem even at the cost of discharging a few ministers from their posts and tarnishing the reputation of the ruling party, the Social Democratic Alliance (SDSM), which has been in power for five years already. And what is even more important, Crvenkovski annunced early parliamentary elections, as obviously the only way out from the situation the country has gotten into. A complete turn thus occurred in just a few days.

However demagogical his speech may have sounded and however questioned it may have been by his political rivals who have not failed to characterize it as a tactical move, one thing will be remembered: for the first time a member of the ruling SDSM - and not just any member, but its President - has sharply spoken about the alarming situation in the state, without disassociating either himself or his own party from the events which are seriously threatening the peace in the country. It may freely be said that Prime Minister Crvenkovski made a speech of his entire career at the session of the Assembly on 20 March. What is the most convincing is the fact that the Prime Minister accepted the previous invitation of the opposition for a dialogue and joint creation of new election "rules of the game" and the date of scheduling new elections. This was indeed the only possible way out of the situation in which the reputation of the authorities had been tarnished because of the ruined savings-bank TAT from Bitola and the pyramidal scandal which followed, but also for him personally if he wished to continue working in politics. The general assessment is that with this move, the possibility of "Albaniazation" of the situation was avoided.

For the first time, the Prime Minister has openly confessed that there was a firm connection between the crime and the people in the authorities, and the announcement of uncompromising action in this direction finally showed that this time there would be no compromise. His most important and most powerful opponent in the opposition, leader of the VMRO-DPMNE, Ljupco Georgievski, has also understood this. He therefore, cancelled the already announced protest rally (previously assessed by the Persident of the state as training of street democracy and as dangerous for the state) giving in this way manoeuvring space to Crvenkovski to fulfill his own promise. The speech of President Gligorov in which he presented the mentioned qualification was interpreted as a specific threat and warning that "whatever they may be like, those who are in power now are better that the others". Just two days later, Crvenkovski said that he had no intention of being a hostage of his own associates, members of his own party and ministers if they turned out to be mixed up in the scandal in TAT and part of the Bitola "octopus". Contrary to the head of the state who publicly declared that he had no intention of being a mentor of the absolutely necessary dialogue among parties for the sake of overcoming the current political crisis, Crvenkovski realized that it was his big chance.

Apart from everything else, a part of the burden which strains the situation in Macedonia were and still are interethnic tensions. Just before the Prime Minister's appearance, the parliament had adopted the Declaration on interethnic dialogue in which the PDP, the most influential party of Macedonian Albanians, agreed to methods of dialogue and tolerance, although the mentioned document had in the beginning sounded frivolous. Immediately after that a message arrived from Washington in which the USA refused to support establishment of parallel structures, or even any attempt to establish parallel structures, or any attempt to establish federalism on ethnic grounds. That is how the space for fair-play was opened and Macedonia suddenly got a chance to get itself out of the difficult political crisis.

Aleksandar DAMOVSKI