LONDON/SKOPJE, 8 November 2004 — An anti-Muslim referendum forced by Macedonia’s nationalist opposition VMRO-DPMNE party against added rights for the ethnic Albania minority is likely to fail due to low voter turnout yesterday.
Two hours after polling stations closed at 7.00 p.m., only 21 percent of the 1.7 million registered voters had cast ballots, well short of the 50 percent minimum turnout needed, the private election observer group Most reported in the capital Skopje.
Western diplomats have also spoken of a failure of the referendum. The state election commission will publish the official results today. There were no reports of violence during the referendum.
The referendum challenged the implementation of a peace and reform agreement that stopped the fighting in 2001, and sought to block the redrawing of municipal borders within Macedonia, as agreed in the peace deal.
The referendum once again highlighted the precarious vagaries of state, nation, ethnicity, and religion in the Balkans, Europe’s volatile southeastern flank.
The ballot was more a vote for or against decentralization, than to reach a final status for the future political dispensation of an aspiring democratic Macedonia.
The Macedonian government, buoyed by US recognition of Macedonia’s constitutional name, had pulled out all the stops to scupper the referendum.
Prime Minister Hari Kostov had threatened to resign if yesterday’s referendum succeeded in overturning EU-backed laws on decentralization.
The legislation aims to empower the former Yugoslav republic’s Muslim ethnic Albanian minority by changing municipal electoral boundaries and elevating Albanian to the status of a second official language in Skopje.
The referendum, first proposed by Macedonian Orthodox Christian nationalists, simply asked the 1.6 million voters in Macedonia whether they are in favor of the boundary changes, which were effectively agreed at the Orhid Peace Accords in 2001, which ended months of ethnic strife between the two groups.
The Orhid Accord also laid the basis for greater recognition and participation for the country’s Muslim ethnic Albanian minority that make up 25 percent of the population, and other minorities such as the Muslim Turks and Romanics.
If the vote is in favor of retaining the status quo with all its negative implications for ethnic harmony, then it could push the country into the brink of civil war once again, and could also impact on Europe’s wider ethnic Albanian issue, especially in neighboring Kosovo, where UN troops are effectively the thin blue line that keeps the peace between the Ethnic Albanians and the Orthodox Serbs.
As an incentive to the government led by Kostov, President George W. Bush recognized the Balkan country by its constitutional name “The Republic of Macedonia”, to the chagrin of the Greeks, who have insisted that the country be called the Former Yugolsav Republic of Macedonia (FYRM) so as not to confuse it with its own province of Macedonia.
The Greeks are keen also to stave off any future claims for a Greater Macedonia incorporating part of their own territory of Macedonia, ironically the same charge Macedonians are laying at the feet of the ethnic Albanians. Whom they accuse of trying to forge a “Greater Albania”.
While both the EU and the US are dangling carrots of future EU membership, political recognition and economic aid in front of ethnic and national leaders in the region, the danger is that such policies can give rise to false hopes especially if they are based on political expediency to bring short-term peace, as opposed to sound constitutional and democratic frameworks and considerations.
Most Macedonian Albanians say that all they want is to be equal to ethnic Macedonians; to be recognized as equal by the Macedonian Constitution; for Albanian to be an official language; and they want a state-funded Albanian-language university.
Macedonians on the other hand argue that what their Albanian countrymen really want is the destruction of Macedonia and the creation of a “Greater Albania”.
Ethnic Albanians talk about their religion, culture, role in public life, education, media and elsewhere being constantly undermined by Macedonian officials so as to make them feel second-class citizens in their own country. During the ethnic conflict in 2001, several mosques and Waqfs (religious endowments) were burned down by Macedonian paramilitaries and gangs especially in Central Prilep.
Building a national multiethnic consensus and state is going to be a difficult task. Especially, when you have such a big diametrically different ethnic and religious minority in the country.
While most ethnic Albanians reportedly boycotted the referendum — their participation would have had little impact on the result given that for the referendum to be carried, one side would simply need a 50 percent majority. — Additional input from agencies.
