MACEDONIA - THERE WILL BE ELECTIONS, BUT WHEN?

AIM Skopje, 15 November, 1997

From the very beginning of democratization, elections in Macedonia are a necessity, but never are they scheduled when the citizens ask for them, and least of all are they scheduled in order to ensure a true democratic progress. That is how it was in 1990, and that is how it will be in 1998, eight years later.

On the sixth anniversary of the democratic Constitution of Macedonia, the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) addressed a proposal to the assembly to schedule early parliamentary election for 29 March next year. At the same time the LDP made this proposal public by a paid advertisement in independent press. The Liberals also informed the Macedonian public about precise time-table of the plan by means of which they intend to force the authorities to accept their proposal.

This detailed plan, in the focus of which is passing of the law on the election of deputies, is in fact addressed to the ruling coalition in order to deny the argument that early elections in Macedonia cannot be held. Indeed, the government of the Social Democratic Alliance (SDSM), contrary to promises of prime minister Branko Crvenkovski that only elections can cure the corrupt policy and the dying economy of the country, is not willing to accept to face the voters before schedule. The main pretext is that all the laws necessary for the elections to be fair and free have not been prepared.

Haggling about the elections lasts ever since the first multiparty elections in 1990, when the elections were organized according to the obsolete, somewhat dressed-up laws of SFRY. The VMRO-DPMNE won, but it could not form the government with its 38 deputies out of the total of 120. The SDM-PDP (which was later transformed into SDSM) could not do it either with its 31 deputies.

Faced with a parliamentary paralysis, Macedonia had to resolve the dilemma whether to schedule new elections or think up something completely different. By a skilfull manoeuvre of president Kiro Gligorov, who was elected only after repeated voting in the parliament, the public was led to believe (which is still maintained) that it was dangerous (and expensive) to go to the polls too often. At the time the danger was coming from the north, partly from the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and partly from Milosevic, so Gligorov was able to convince the citizens of Macedonia that it was good, in the circumstances when no party could form the government on its own, to have a government of "experts". New elections - absolutely not.

This was readily accepted by SKM-PDP which feared complete and definite defeat, but also by VMRO-DPMNE which has not recovered from shock caused by its own victory. Its leadership could not have imagined that it would win that many seats in the parliament. They were afraid but that they would not be able to repeat the success in new elections, being a comparatively new and still not well organized party. Only the Albanian parties were at ease. They had a stable electorate which later confirmed that the Macedonian parliament would never have less than twenty odd Albanian deputies, of various political colouring, of course, but all of them united by the commitment to gaining the broadest possible range of ethnic rights.

Simply, the election results were nullified by establishment of an expert government in which only two ministers publicly admitted that one belonged to SKM-PDP and the other to VMRO-DPMNE while the others concealed their party affiliation, and only later those who have remained in it made it public that they had been reformed communists all the time. That is what it was like as concerning the executive authorities.

As concerning the assembly, fragmentized deputy groups were deliberately maintained in order to use various quarrels and paralysis of the Assembly for postponement of the elections. Because, both then and now, it is clear to everybody in Macedonia that normal democratic trends can be introduced into its political life only under the condition that the parliament elected by truly democratic elections, reflects political reality.

Of course, the government of experts neither could nor was it intended to make much progress in implementation of democratic political and economic reforms. It was not possible for it to make any progress because it did not have the support in the parliament for certain key issues. Political parties backed it only concerning general, often unimportant issues. That is how the compromise Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia was written and adopted, which was at the time and still is too narrow to regulate the complex political and ethnic pattern of Macedonian democratic problems.

The expert government of Nikola Kljusev did not last long, in fact just long enough to immobilize reform. It fell just when it was needed, when it had managed to pass as many laws as was necessary for the state to start operating as a service of the party in power. Kljusev and his government fell by a manoeuvre of his political sponsor, president Gligorov.

Having smelled the rat, the mandator of SKM-PDP, Petar Gosev, returned the mandate. Young Branko Crvenkovski, however, immediately accepted the "relay baton". He knew that the biggest party, VMRO-DPMNE was afraid of power because it was not capable of preserving it by itself, least of all to the form the government on its own. He offered a coalition to the Reformists (who are now the Liberals) and they grabbed the opportunity. They were practically given power as a gift which was escaping them ever since the fall of Ante Markovic. The Albanian PDP (Party of Democratic Prosperity) had no dilemma either, it simply agreed to having most of its ministers from the former expert government remain in the new cabinet.

That is when Crvenkovski promised early elections for the first time, and he is still promising them, but does not seem to be willing to fulfill the promise and actually schedule them.

The elections, but regular, were held in 1994, after the expiry of the constitutional time limit of four years. The electoral register was forged, and the results fixed to prevent the opposition VMRO-DPMNE to come to power, which in the meantime gained so much strength that it became the biggest and the best organized party with a very loyal core.

That the elections in 1994 were forged was confirmed by Stojan Andov, who was member of the then ruling coalition and the election Alliance for Macedonia and until recently the chairman of the assembly. Nowadays, as the former chairman of the assembly and current leader of the opposition he is among the loudest who demand early elections, because the elections in 1990 were usurped and the ones in 1994 forged, as he himself admits nowadays.

Since the Macedonian public is still inclined to carry out the reform of its, worst form of post-communism, by democratic means, it has responded last year to the appeal of the opposition headed by VMRO-DPMNE and the then Democratic Party, and 220 thousand signatures were collected in favour of early elections.

The law on referendum requires only 150 thousand, but never mind. The authorities were not willing to dissolve the parliament, nor the parliament did not agree to do it voluntarily. The Macedonian constitution prescribes that the elections may be scheduled only if the assembly is dissolved, so by this skilful manoeuvre, the regime avoided it. It used the danger of the Albanians this time. The pretext was: if early elections were accepted, the Albanians would demand a referendum very quickly in order to secede.

Exactly seven years have elapsed since the first "democratic" elections, and Macedonia is still far from democracy. There have been elections, but they were not at all real. Other tensions are increasing in the society. Discontent with the increasing dilapidation of the economy, but also with the never even truly initiated, least of all implemented political reform is rapidly and dangerously growing. The number of the unemployed reached 400 thousand, workers whose enterprises are bankrupt are more numerous than those regularly employed, and those who are working, receive salaries every six months.

Then there is privatization as a special scandal. In public, the Macedonian model of transformation of social property is publicly called plunder. Privatized enterprises are ruined, in some privatization is revised, and the others do not know what to do nowadays when smuggling with Serbia (during the blockade) ceased to be the main economic branch in Macedonia.

To schedule the elections in such conditions for the ruling SDSM means to commit suicide. Prime minister and president of SDSM, Branko Crvenkovski, is trying to get out of the scrape and create sufficient breathing space for indispensable reorganization of the party. Only SDSM has remained practically unchanged, especially because in the process of loss of prestige and confidence, it has lost even the few intellectuals who formed its core.

He relies on foreign loans, on the support of the Americans - but under the condition that he proves to be in control of the situation, but especially of what he himself christened - the "Octopus". In one of his known moments in which he diverts attention of the public to "the internal and external enemy", Crvenkovski promised that he would expose the mafia and organized crime: "the octopus whose tentacles are strangling the society, and whose head is in the aurthorities! Even if it were the sacred SDSM!"

These words of the young prime minister have remained without an epilogue, but the deadline for the elections, which he himself promised would be early and a remedy for the situation, is getting closer. Because next year will be the year of elections. If not early, then certainly regular.

The impression is that all possible manouevres have already been used and that the authorities, nowadays faced with public pressure of the LDP, which was formed of parts of the Democratic Party and the Reformists-Liberals, will have to give in. Especially because the powerful VMRO-DPMNE has also decided to back LDP.

The authorities must take good care about political forces in the country, because a new distribution of them is appearing on the political scene. VMRO-DPMNE which has definitely got rid of the inherited mortgage imposed on it is nowadays peacefully sailing down the right current of Macedonian politics.

That is the reason why there is plenty of excitement on the left. Since, historically speaking, in the past hundred years, politics in Macedonia was divided into the right and the left, VMRO and the Socialists, there is much concern on the left who will jump into the historical boots of former Macedonian Socialists who had deputies in the Turkish parliament without even having signed the union in Vukovar.

The Liberals, reinforced by marriage with Gosev and his faction of DP which is accompanying it ever since the tiime of the league of communists of Macedonia, would like to have the honour. That is why they are building this image for themselves, and at the same time they are approaching president Gligorov, who on the other hand is aware that he may remain "as the greatest investment of the SDSM" very lonely if in 1998 elections the opposition wins.

Essentially, Kiro Gligorov who has until now constructed his position as the president of the state by origin from one party alone - SDSM, is coping with the situation best of all. He took up the task he is best at - political manoeuvring. Concerning membership in NATO and the EU, he managed to gather around himslef both parts of the parties in power and the opposition, and he is already demonstrating intimacy with them and consults them, and in this way he is integrating them in his "entourage". He is cherishing closeness, especially with the LDP, expecting that perhaps in a reconstructed coalition with a faction of the SDSM they will be able to prevent VMRO-DPMNE from winning power one more time.

Therefore, it depends on manoeuvring in that direction whether the elections in Macedonia next year will be early or regular, not because laws had not been adopted, nor because there is some kind of a threat, nor because they are expensive.

AIM Skopje SLOBODAN CASULE