Volume 11 Numbers 1/2

Winter/Spring 2002

Constitutional Watch
     A country-by-country update on constitutional politics in Eastern Europe and the ex-USSR

Macedonia - Implementation of the Ohrid agreement, which brought an end to the fighting in August by granting the ethnic-Albanian minority certain political reforms it had been demanding for years, has proceeded sporadically, threatening the return of ethnic violence in Macedonia. In late January, a long-awaited local-government bill, which provides for the devolution of many central-government functions to local communities, was finally adopted under intense international pressure. But, as of mid-February, a formal amnesty law for all former Nationalist Liberation Army (NLA) fighters-a central component of Ohrid and a crucial step toward reintegrating ethnic Albanians into the political process-had yet to be adopted by parliament. The hard-line nationalist government of Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski and Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski has resisted the execution of the August agreement at every turn, exacerbating ethnic tensions and risking a resurgence of violence. The international community, meanwhile, is doing all it can to avert further degeneration.

On January 24, 84 out of 120 members of parliament approved the law decentralizing many aspects of government. (The vote barely met the two-thirds majority required to pass any measure relating to the rights of ethnic minorities.) The legislation deals with many policy areas, including the budget, municipal planning, health care, welfare, culture, and education. The most controversial provision of the original bill implied the possibility that adjacent local administrations could merge, raising the specter of federalization and partition-the great fear of many Macedonians. The measure, in its final form, only allows for joint administration in certain policy areas, including education and health. Another much-argued point was the local financing of health care. Ultimately, a compromise was reached transferring responsibility for basic health care to the local jurisdictions, while control over health insurance remains in the central government's hands.

While the law's adoption was a crucial feature of the Ohrid agreement, hard-line Macedonian resistance to it softened only when it was made a precondition for the international donors' conference, by means of which the Macedonian government hopes to cover its large budget deficit. In the end, parliament only passed the measure after the central-bank governor, Ljube Trpeski, warned that the country's macroeconomic stability was seriously at risk if the conference was not held soon. Another precondition for the conference was the negotiation of a monitoring agreement with the IMF, which was concluded in December. At the conference, Macedonia hopes to receive pledges of nearly $80 million.

Drafting an amnesty law only began in February, after agreement was reached among the major political parties, on January 30. Although several decrees have been issued by President Boris Trajkovski, granting amnesty to former NLA fighters (see Macedonia Update, EECR, Vol. 10, No. 4, Fall 2001), ethnic Albanians have demanded that a sweeping measure be ratified by parliament in order to have the full force of law. While the presidential decrees have freed 64 of the 88 Albanians held in detention, they are too full of loopholes to guarantee the complete integration of the former fighters into Macedonian society. Many onetime NLA members have found it difficult to return to civilian life for fear of police harassment and detention. There have been reports, for example, of ill treatment and arrests when these erstwhile NLA fighters apply for passports at local police stations. A full amnesty would be especially significant, however, for the former leader and political representative of the NLA, Ali Ahmeti, who has been unable to enter political life, fully, or to travel from his stronghold in Shipkovica for fear of arrest.

The lack of an amnesty law has also hindered the reassertion of control by the Macedonian police forces over many of the villages formerly occupied by the NLA. Taken as a whole, such villages comprise as much as 10 percent of the territory of Macedonia. The process of police redeployment has proved one of the most vexing aspects of the return to normal civil life. Many villages, where former NLA members live, have refused entry to police patrols, fearing arrests and reprisals. By mid-February, multiethnic police patrols, often with Office for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) monitors in tow, had returned to more than half of the roughly 100 Albanian-majority villages once held by the NLA. The return of these forces had been proceeding slowly and cautiously, beginning in mid-November, according to an OSCE plan. (See Macedonia Update, EECR, Vol. 10, No. 4, Fall 2001.) But the actual work progressed much more slowly than planned.

Hard-line elements in the government, especially Georgievski and Boskovski, have used the issue of reasserting police control to incite violence and as a pretext to deploy paramilitary forces. In particular, the special police unit known as the Lions, which operates under Boskovski's authority, has been a consistent provocation to the ethnic-Albanian minority. For instance, Albanians were outraged by a ceremony, on January 9 and attended by Georgievski, at which the leader of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Stefan, bestowed a blessing on the Lions, calling on them to protect the "holy country" of Macedonia. Members of the mostly Muslim ethnic-Albanian community condemned the ceremony as divisive, while the Albanian National Army (ANA), the secretive successor to the NLA, threatened a renewal of hostilities. The Lions had been deployed at checkpoints around Albanian-majority villages near Tetovo, until they were withdrawn to their barracks on February 5 and replaced by multiethnic police units, in a marked deescalation of tensions. The Lions were founded last September by Boskovski and Georgievski and have been called a "private army" by opposition Social Democratic Alliance of Macedonia (SDAM) officials.

The police issue has also polarized the ruling Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization- Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (IMRO-DPMNU) into moderate and hard-line elements. On January 18, leading moderate Dosta Dimovska resigned as deputy prime minister and chair of the Coordination Body for Crisis Management, which was responsible for the redeployment of police patrols. She also resigned her leadership position in IMRO-DPMNU. Dimovska accused Georgievski of undermining her work with the multiethnic police forces in the mostly Albanian villages. Dimovska had been in government since November 2001, when SDAM left the national-unity government following the insurgency. (See Macedonia Update, EECR, Vol. 10, No. 4, Fall 2001.) SDAM's departure left the right-wing IMRO-DPMNU as the predominant force in government, and Dimovska's appointment as minister without portfolio in the new cabinet was intended as gesture to balance the more extremist elements represented by Georgievski and Boskovski. Dimovska's resignation signals a clear division within the party between those advocating flexibility and caution in the reassertion of sovereignty and those calling for a more aggressive approach.

Meanwhile, the major ethnic-Albanian parties are heading in the opposite direction, toward greater unity. In mid-January, former NLA leader Ali Ahmeti invited the leaders of the ethnic-Albanian political parties to his stronghold, in the village of Sipkovica, to form a Coordination Council. The council consisted of two representatives each from the Party for Democratic Prosperity (PDP), the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA), the National Democratic Party (NDP), and the NLA. This united political formation will likely be named the Democratic Alliance-Integration Movement and will stand in the next election with the goal of fully implementing the Ohrid reforms. The new formation is significant because, in the past, the various ethnic-Albanian parties were divided by ideology. Their newfound solidarity is a testament to the power and popularity of Ahmeti, whose stature rose considerably during the fighting, as well as to the need of the parties to shore up their flagging electoral support. However, such an ethnic bloc, while likely to increase Albanian representation in parliament, could vastly complicate any attempts at a multiethnic coalition in the next government.

According to the Ohrid agreement, the next elections were to be held at the end of January 2002. Because of delays in implementing other aspects of the agreement, however, they were postponed to an unspecified date in November 2002. (See Macedonia Update, EECR, Vol. 10, No. 4, Fall 2001.) By early February, there was still no consensus as to when elections should be held. SDAM, anxious to capitalize on its present popularity, would hold elections soon, in June or July. IMRO-DPMNU wants to defer elections at least until the police have regained control of the entire territory. For the Albanian parties, a major stumbling block is the issue of electoral procedure. Under existing legislation, parliament has 120 seats, 85 of which are filled from single-mandate districts by majority voting. The remaining 35 are elected in nationwide voting by party lists according to proportional representation. The Albanian parties want to move to a strictly proportional system for electing all 120 deputies. There is also a compromise option being floated to maintain the parallel system, with 60 of the deputies elected on a proportional basis. Elections probably will not be held before the present parliamentary term ends in the fall of 2002.

The highly politicized issue of the now long-overdue census has been deferred, once again. The census was originally scheduled for May 2001 but was postponed because of social instability until October, at which point it was postponed again, until April 2002. As recently as mid-January, when a European Commission monitoring team arrived in Macedonia, the process was still on track. However, by January 24, it was clear that the census would have to be postponed yet again, this time until July or October. The census has always been politically charged because the size of the ethnic-Albanian population in Macedonia is hotly contested by both sides, with estimates ranging from 15 to 50 percent. The census is also of central importance to the Ohrid agreement, which mandates that minority languages be deemed official languages by local governments in localities where minorities constitute 20 percent, or more, of the population. An accurate census will have to be taken before these determinations can be made. The last regular census of 1991 had to be repeated under international auspices in 1994.

Although hard-line politicians have warned of a spring offensive by Albanian insurgents and have consistently refused to rule out a return to violence, Macedonia has been relatively free of major incidents for the last few months. Many of the dire warnings issued by the government are being dismissed as fearmongering, designed to shore up the hard-line nationalist position. There are occasional skirmishes and confrontations between police and ethnic-Albanian villagers. In late December, an Albanian farmer was fatally shot by police at a checkpoint near Tetovo. On February 10, an ethnic Slav was killed by a booby-trap bomb in Aracinovo, a Skopje suburb. A police spokesman speculated that the bomb was intended for the victim's brother who worked for the security forces. And, on January 29, UN police intercepted a small shipment of arms being smuggled by ethnic Albanians across the border from Kosovo into Macedonia. It was not clear for whom the shipment was intended. In any case, the NATO mandate, which maintains a 900-strong international force in Macedonia to help keep the peace and protect international monitors, was extended for three months beyond its scheduled expiration date of March 26.

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