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Comment: Macedonian PM Riles Parliamentary Colleagues

Iso Rusi

04 10 2007  Violent incidents in the Macedonian Parliament and their aftermath may be interpreted in several ways, but none says much for the democratic orientation of Macedonian policy.

By Iso Rusi in Skopje

If it is accepted that primitivism is part of the Macedonian political scene then things may appear clearer. But, if certain incidents are viewed as the inevitable result of high tensions between the government and the opposition then serious problems start to become apparent.

These problems are not limited to relations between the ruling VMRO-DPMNE and the opposition Democratic Union of Integration, DUI but to the lack of dialogue with other political actors, the Macedonian opposition parties, the President and occasionally even with partners in the ruling bloc. And the most serious problem now is a growing impression among observers inside and outside of Macedonia that the achievements of the Ohrid framework agreement are falling apart.

Ahead of his visit to Brussels on Wednesday, Macedonian President Branko Crvenkovski warned that he expected to be grilled about “whether Macedonia has the institutional capacity and the political willingness, a clear plan and firm deadlines to get back to normal and focus on the tasks bringing the country closer to the EU and NATO, because recent developments have raised questions about Macedonia’s capacity to become a NATO member or start negotiations on accession to the EU.”

Both Brussels and the public in Macedonia were shocked by the violence displayed recently by Albanian deputies.

On the level of primitivism things are clear. The primitive and provocative vocabulary used by the leader of the Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity in his address to his not-so-long-ago coalition partners from the DUI provoked the latter to use fists as counterarguments.

As a follow-up, all sorts of things happened in the hallways of the Parliament building: a journalist was slapped by a party official, a deputy minister kicked a member of parliament, a party leader threatened and then began to throttle a deputy vice president of a rival party.

Then the police provided the finishing touches to the whole ugly story. While DUI deputies were in the parliament building, police were deployed heavily in downtown Skopje, where they clashed with a group reported to be armed DUI supporters coming to the rescue of their MPs.

Some of the DUI group ended up in hospital bleeding, the others were detained. Cameramen of Alsat TV, covering developments, were also detained. Even passers-by were ill-treated; members of the Alpha special police unit knocked them down at gunpoint, before asking them what they were doing there.

Skopje’s downtown resembled a scene from an action movie, with an atmosphere rather similar to Baghdad or Kabul.

The next day, Alpha police unit members tried to stop and detain a deputy (who enjoys parliamentarian immunity) as he made his way to his party’s headquarters. An Alsat TV cameraman got the worst of it by refusing to hand over the recorded material and ended up with broken ribs.

As one of my colleagues puts it, this was “a parade of Albanian rancour and a public demonstration of violence and vulgarity;” the parliament became “a Balkan inn hosting the bullies with shaven heads and thick necks as guests of the Albanian parties.”

These recent events resemble a series of incidents at the beginning of the election campaign in 2006 between supporters of two major Albanian parties – the DUI and the DPA. When the incidents started to pose a risk to the elections the party leaders were summoned to the US Embassy (situated in a former kindergarten) where they were lectured as if they were naughty children and forced to stop misbehaving immediately.

Neither pre-election violence nor post-election coalition-making explain the current situation of chronic, emotional and escalating disagreement among Albanian politicians but ongoing disagreements show the government`s policy is to be blamed for the overall atmosphere between Macedonian and Albanian parties.

After the elections, tensions rose between the rival Albanian parties over which party would enter Nikola Gruevski’s government – the DUI, which had won most Albanian votes, or the DPA, which was believed to be ideologically closer to VMRO-DPMNE.

Prime Minister Gruevski did not stop at clashing with the DUI over the party’s participation in his government.

The frequent warning messages from Brussels about a “lack of political dialogue” do not refer only to communication with the DUI but also to the PM`s unwillingness to accept opinions from other parties.

The Social Democratic Union of Macedonia, SDSM and the Liberal Democratic Party, LDP refused to be extras at meetings with the prime minister after their suggestions on various issues were discarded.

Indeed the open war between the Government and the President of the state is further proof that Prime Minister Gruevski is always one of the parties to any disagreement. Both sides have stubbornly refused to accept each others proposals for a members of the Judicial council, a key step for judiciary reform and matter of harsh criticism from Brussels.

At times, Gruevski has had tense relations even with his own coalition partners in Government – the New Social Democratic Party, NSDP, and also with the DPA, which threatened to leave the Government because of the agreement reached by Gruevski and the DUI’s leader Ali Ahmeti in May 2007 over crucial Albanian demands related to the Ohrid peace deal.

With his arrogance towards anything that emanated from Ali Ahmeti and the DUI during the first days of his Government, dismissing all moves by the DUI as a product of resentment over being excluded from the ruling coalition, Prime Minister Gruevski has brought himself into a situation where he has had to be forced by the internationals to sit at the negotiating table with Ahmeti and, even worse, to accept almost everything he previously rejected just in order to secure the DUI’s return to the Parliament.

The DUI shrewdly made the prime minister’s arrogant use of his parliamentary majority to amend a law without the so-called double majority, of Members of Parliament and of deputies from minority ethnic communities (known as Badenter’s principle), a pretext for walking out of Parliament, claiming that Gruevski had undermined the achievements of the Ohrid Agreement.

The desire of the government to adopt a new election code, granting ten seats to smaller ethnic communities in Macedonia and three to the diaspora, was labelled by the DUI and by some experts as an attempt to dismantle the mechanism of double voting in favour of “simple arithmetic”, to the disadvantage of Albanian deputies.

Some other moves of the Government, including its reluctance to accept the law on official use of languages, its stalled implementation of equitable representation of Albanians in the state administration, its delaying of the decentralization process where Albanian municipalities and mayors have specific problems, and its failure to implement the steps agreed in May under the auspices of US and EU mediation, are also viewed by the DUI as attempts to weaken the Ohrid Agreement.

Where is the DPA and its leader Menduh Thaci in this story? There is a widespread belief among the Albanian public in Macedonia that Gruevski is using them to do his dirty work regarding the DUI and also regarding the SDSM and President Crvenkovski.

But, everything comes with a price. Thaci has demonstrated that he is twice as powerful as Gruevski and has made the Prime Minister his hostage. Gruevski currently has no alternative but to work with Thaci as he cannot attempt to create a purely Macedonian government.
Also, since the VMRO DPMNE has just 45 deputies in the 120-seat parliament, the DPA, which brings 11 deputies on to the government side of the house, enjoys considerable leverage.

The Prime Minister remained mute when Thaci openly threatened journalists and colleagues from the opposition, or used hate speech. Some even believe that Gruevski no longer respects the agreement with Ahmeti guaranteed by the EU and US, fearing Thaci’s reaction.

Prime Minister Gruevski may enjoy high approval ratings inside the country due to optimism that he will be able to recover the impoverished economy, but the increasingly critical view from outside related to the reform processes is far from favourable– and unfortunately EU accession depends on the view from outside.

The opposition, both Albanian and Macedonian, would have to be blind not to derive some advantage from this. If the opposition manages to coordinate its efforts in resolving developments inside and around the parliament, it will claim the first victory.


Iso Rusi is a journalist and acting president of the Macedonia Helsinki Committee for Human Rights.