Balkanalysis.com

Introduction

As the year began, the three-month-old SDSM-DUI government was still being given the benefit of the doubt. Sure, they had produced nothing substantial, but the people were willing to see what would happen. The fact that nothing has happened (i.e., no war), something so irrelevant in most countries, is nevertheless considered a victory here. Considering that the bar was set so low, and considering that the opposition parties had no stirring platform, the coalition suffered no appreciable criticism. In fact, the only problems it faced came from internal party tensions, and individual politicians angling for favor and better positions.

A big test for the government, though not one they would have chosen to fail, came in May with the US request that the International Criminal Court have no jurisdiction over its citizens in Macedonia. Rather than risk losing military aid, Macedonian acquiesced. The little country also accepted another offer it couldn’t refuse by agreeing to send special troops to Iraq. They returned in December, thanking God to still be alive. Thus an Imperial obligation was upheld without any politically damaging military deaths having been incurred.The Macedonian parties

The ruling SDSM remained largely impervious to outside criticism and was only really affected by internal dissent. Criticism of Finance Minister Petar Gosev over the economy continued, though threatened shake-ups in that ministry did not happen until late, when the LDP man was succeeded by Nikola Popovski, former Speaker of Parliament and SDSM member. In trade, SDSM’s Minister of Economy Ilija Filipovski was replaced by Stefce Jatimovski, from junior coalition member LDP. Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski kept his grip on the party, while former banker Hari Kostov generally succeeded in his role as supreme cop. As for Defense Minister Buchkovski, his necessary cooperation with NATO and the US on Iraq earned him plaudits and solidified his position as a top official in SDSM. Foreign Minister Ilinka Mitreva remained one of the more popular public figures as well.

The early months of 2003 saw the continuing politicization of the Lions saga. In January, a horde of former Interior Minister Boskovski’s special police descended on Blace, armed with machine guns and angry over losing their jobs. The government had announced that they would be disbanded, and that the individuals could re-apply to enter existing police units.

When the Lions threatened to attack the Blace police contingent (which had also provoked them) the government quickly moved to appease Boskovski’s force. Interior Minister Kostov announced that the top 600 of them would be re-organized into an “antiterrorist” unit- meaning merely there would be fewer disgruntled Lions left to deal with. But the problem was merely deferred, until resurfacing in a protest outside the parliament. Ironically, here the “retained” Lions were ordered to act decisively against the protesters, who had until recently shared the same uniform with them.

VMRO’s “rebirth” was perhaps the most remarkable political development of the year. After being harshly criticized for his outspoken statements that Macedonia should be partitioned, former PM Ljubco Georgievski voluntarily surrendered the party helm. In the ensuing speculation over who would replace him, two prime candidates- former Finance Minister Nikola Gruevski and former Agriculture Minister Marjan Gjorchev- were mentioned. After debating the issue and almost backing out, the young Gruevski stepped forward and easily won the backing of the party. Widely respected for his fiscal savvy, Gruevski was seen as representing the party’s best potential for getting back on track. However, even despite the new shake-up in the top VMRO leadership, the party remained essentially a reactionary one, mostly criticizing statements and policies of SDSM and every Albanian party.

It was a lukewarm year for President Boris Trajkovski. The VMRO-elected if no longer sanctioned Trajkovski, commonly perceived as being an American lackey, came under fire in April for his blundering proposal in Strasbourg, to call Macedonia the “European Republic of Macedonia.” Second, and more serious, was Trajkovski’s pardoning of Dosta Dimovska, the former national security advisor implicated in the wiretapping scandal that immediately preceded the 2001 war. At the time, the president’s office said there were “no documents or evidence to prove the so-called phone-tapping affair.” However, the same office then contradicted this claim, stating that, “the people who really ordered and carried out the phone tapping had escaped prosecution.” Rather mysterious!

Trajkovski also lashed out at his critics, accusing the SDSM government of having failed in the past to investigate financial pyramid schemes and Macedonian connections with Serb mafia gangs. With the latter, Trajkovski was particulary referring to the Zemun gang which killed Serbian President Zoran Djindjic on 12 March. These claims were backed by his close allies, Ljubomir Frckovski and Dosta Dimovska, both former interior ministers.

AS for the former, these appeared to be thinly veiled references to the TAT Bank scandal in Bitola and the sanctions-busting of SDSM government in the 1990’s with Serbia. Both presidential actions seem to have been made with a mind to the next month’s conference of VMRO-DPMNE, and more generally, the 2004 presidential elections.

Trajkovski’s aspirations were clearly revealed with the year-ending fiasco in which he addressed an assembled crowd in English and Albanian- but not Macedonian. Apparently, this was intended to please Albanian voters in advance of next year’s election. After such a gaffe one wonders what Macedonian party could credibly advocate Trajkovski in the coming elections.

The Albanian political scene

It was another trying year for Ali Ahmeti and his fledgling DUI party. The party headquarters in Skopje’s neighborhood of Chair was repeatedly attacked in the early part of the year, even coming under rocket fire from Albanian rivals. In March, DUI scored an own-goal with the passport fiasco. The Albanian parties had demanded that all Macedonian passports be printed in the Albanian language as well as Macedonian. The compromise agreement reached allowed that Albanian be printed, based on individual demand. This ensured that foreign border police would readily be able to separate the Albanians from other Macedonian citizens- and so treat them differently, if for whatever reason they were pre-inclined to prejudice. In return, Ahmeti had to agree (in theory, at least) to respect the state’s sovereignty, borders, and assert that Macedonian was the national language. A pretty Pyrrhic victory, in the end.

In the early part of the year, DPA continued offering DUI members large amounts of cash to defect- a policy that worked in several cases. However, Xhaferi’s party had very little success at emerging from the hole it dug itself by adopting an extreme nationalist platform during the 2002 elections. Disastrously, Xhaferi, Thaci and Co. not only continued but upped the rhetoric about the need for more war in 2003, thus ostracizing themselves further from their once-friendly Western benefactors, to the extent that the only sympathetic American interest came late and from neocon chameleon Steven Schwartz. Of course, the DPA continued its loose affiliation with rabid American diaspora groups like the AACL. As with theirs, the DPA tactic rests constantly claiming there is an urgent crisis that must be resolved immediately.

In early June, Ahmeti made an alliance with the small, radical National Democratic Party, led by Kastriot Haxirexa, another suspected war criminal. The move came immediately after Ahmeti was r
emoved from George Bush’s terrorist black list. Haxirexa melted his party into DUI, hoping to gain the seat of health minister and also an ambassadorial post for his right hand man, Fadilj Bajrami. NDP was notable for its platform to divide Macedonia into three separate regions, the west which would have an Albanian majority, the ethnic Macedonian east, and the city of Skopje as a separate federal unit.

A month later, Xhezair Shaqiri, also known as Commander Hoxha (the only MP from NDP who didn’t accept the merger with DUI), accused Ali Ahmeti of staging a massacre at Skopje’s Caircanka Mall, in which Ridvan Neziri (Commander Odja), one of his bodyguards and three bypassers were shot. The attackers, four masked men armed with kalashnikovs, opened fire on Neziri and then threw a grenade at him. Ahmeti heatedly denied the accusations, calling Shaqiri “too minor” of a figure to waste his time on.

The smallest Albanian party and one-time SDSM collaborator PDP was wracked by leadership changes, most recently electing Abdulmenaf Bexheti as president. He replaced Abdurahman Aliti, who resigned in May stating that “it was a mistake to come back and lead the party.” Aliti had been given the PDP leadership shortly before the September 2002 elections, replacing PDP’s chief during the 2001 war, Imer Imeri, who was one of the original signatories to the Ohrid Agreement. Imeri complained of heart trouble.

Unofficial comments from US Embassy personnel revealed that America would have supported PDP in the election, “…except that it was obvious Ahmeti would win.” The mass exodus of PDP members to DUI ensured the latter’s victory. Prominent defectors rewarded for their actions included future Deputy Defence Minister Rizvan Sulejmani, Education Minister Azis Polozani, and Rafiz Aliti, a relative of Sulejmani). According to one critic, “…this was a way for our Western overlords to dilute DUI’s guerrilla base and to add more civilians to it.” The PDP were as close as one could get to Albanian technocrats and professionals, as they held high government places in Macedonia’s first governments.

In the failed elections, PDP’s perceived anti-violence platform appealed to the US, while since then (somewhat ironically) their vocal enthusiasm for American bloodshed in Iraq did as well.

Concluding events

As has been demonstrated, all Macedonian and Albanian parties were wracked by internal discord throughout the year. In April it was rumored that if Gruevski got the VMRO presidency, he would be asked to take the Finance Minister post away from a lackluster Petar Gosev. This did not happen (though Gosev was later sacked in favor of an SDSM insider, Nikola Popovski). Neither did the rumored re-uniting of VMRO splinter parties with the DPMNE to form some kind of “national unity party.” In the same month, Arben Xhaferi reportedly held an urgent secret meeting with Ahmeti, asking him to return to the fold, but could not do it. In defiance, DPA pulled out of the parliament, boycotted the Ohrid Agreement, and Xhaferi went on MTV demanding that Macedonia become “an international protectorate, more efficient than the Kosovo one.” The forming darling of the West was clearly isolated and out of touch.

There was nothing particularly new for political parties’ tactics in 2003. They all still thrive on cronyism, nepotism and corruption. Employment and promotion in the public sector (but in many cases, the private as well) still depend on party affiliation or affiliation with a “connected” individual. For publicity stunts, the populist-slanted VMRO relied on paid advertisements and surreptitiously organized protests, such as hunger strikes from the Lions and ESM workers protests in July, as well as protests against any desires expressed by the Albanians. SDSM, as always, was more slippery and quiet, working from the old Serbian Socialist model. The government’s general lack of results or quick fixes for a lazy and apathetic electorate amply proved that the people got the leaders they deserved.

The absolutely most exciting non-event of the year was the December announcement of a “Third Way” coalition of opposition parties led by Vasil Tupurkovski’s Democratic Alternative, Pavle Tryanov’s Democratic Union, and Ljubisov Ivanov’s Socialist Party. Like the shabby shops that sell fashions popular 5 years ago, the adoption of a concept equally ancient in the West bodes ill for the new coalition. It is composed of politicians who, like Tupurkovski, made truly disastrous decisions when empowered. For this reason, no one cares any more what they might have to say, though apparently they still have enough money to run a political party. A media presence out of proportion to their popularity is ensured by Ivanov’s ownership of the major TV station, Sitel.

Another bizarre year-ending development was the announcement by Ljube Boskovski that he will run for president next year. After going into self-imposed exile for much of time since being deposed in September 2002, Boskovski returned with basically the same nationalistic platform. Most sensationally, he claimed that former NLA commander Ali Ahmeti knew the fates of the 12 kidnapped Macedonians, suggesting that Ahmeti be investigated by the Hague, rather than “Brat Ljube” himself. While Boskovski claimed that he could prove his innocence over Ljuboten, Carla del Ponte and the West dislike him enough to disregard whatever proof he could offer in his own defense.

So how could Macedonia’s political character for 2003 be summed up? Essentially, as more of the same. Nothing particularly great nor anything particularly terrible occurred. Western-style bureaucratization increased slowly, as Macedonia’s government continued to fulfill its caretaker function and perform the wishes of the “international community.”

As such, while no longer being loved as much as it was a year earlier, the government was not particularly unpopular either. Were snap elections to be held tomorrow, it would probably survive (though not be such margins as last time), whereas the president would probably not- an extremely Macedonian irony considering that no potentially more popular candidate has yet stepped forward.

Our series resumes tomorrow with a review of the economic situation in 2003, and concludes Wednesday with a recap of security developments.