[ad_1]
The results of Sunday's referendum in Macedonia on the change of name of the country were hardly conclusive, which led the two parties to claim victory.
The referendum raised the question of the opportunity to rename the country in North Macedonia, in an effort by the government to end a fierce three-decade conflict with its neighbor Greece and to join NATO.
Greece strongly opposes the country that uses the name Macedonia because it involves territorial aspirations against a region of northern Greece bearing the same name.
Among the voters, 91% are in favor of the name change, reported the state electoral commission, with 95% of the votes counted.
But only 36.5% of eligible voters went to the polls. With this low participation rate, getting the necessary support from the Macedonian Parliament could be difficult.
As if few people voted, the opposition claims that the measure failed.
"Those who voted against and those who decided to boycott showed that the vast majority of the population was against this agreement and that it was they who sent the strongest message today," said Hristijan Mickoski. , leader of the main conservative opposition party.
The opposition is opposed to the name change as proposed, as it argues that it could have achieved a better deal in the negotiations with Greece.
The voter turnout was a setback for the government and for Western leaders who had been pushing hard for a resounding popular mandate, although the ruling party has confidence that it can muster the votes to approve the name change.
"The will of those who voted now must be turned into political action in Parliament," Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, who heads the ruling Social Democrats, said Sunday evening.
To approve the change of name, the Macedonian Parliament must vote on the constitutional amendments. Zaev said that if the opposition parties do not support the constitutional changes, he would then resort to "another democratic tool" – a call for early elections in November – to hold his own. ensure that changes are made.
The agreement also requires the support of the Greek Parliament, which must decide to withdraw its objection to the accession of its neighbor to NATO.
The question of whether to change the name of the country has polarized Macedonia, and Western officials say that Russia, long opposed to the expansion of NATO, has been striving to exploit these divisions with misinformation campaigns that flooded the Internet in the weeks leading up to the vote.
In response, leading Western figures, including US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, traveled to Macedonia to try to convince voters to support the name change. The ruling party has put all its political capital on solving the problem and joining NATO or even the European Union.
EU commissioner for negotiations to widen bloc, Johannes Hahn, wrote on Twitter that the result reflects "broad support" both for the name change and for the "Euro-Atlantic way of the country".
"I am now waiting for all political leaders to respect this decision and move it forward with the greatest responsibility and unity in all party lines, in the interest of the country", he wrote.
It could still happen, but the way is now a little more difficult.
The debate on the name of the country, which has its roots in the fourth century BC. AD in the reign of Philip II and his son Alexander the Great, he took a symbolic meaning much greater than the name itself.
Alexander belonged to a Hellenistic culture. The Greeks therefore claim that Slavic-speaking Macedonians do not have the right to claim their inheritance, in addition to arguing that the name change would suggest territorial aspirations.
In February, as negotiations showed signs of progress, tens of thousands of Greeks marched in front of the Athens Parliament, waving flags and chanting: "Macedonia is Greece". The name, proclaimed by the protesters, "is in our soul".
But the real energy behind the sometimes violent protests was the conservative Greek orthodox church and ultranationalists, including the Golden Dawn neo-Nazi party. Western officials said they believed the oligarchs linked to Russia and the Kremlin had also played an important role in the development of demonstrations.
The demonstrations in Macedonia were less important but no less vitriolic.
In June, after the signing by the Greek and Macedonian Foreign Ministers an agreement describing the details of the agreement on the name, hundreds of Macedonians took to the streets of the capital, Skopje. The demonstrations became violent as police fired tear gas and stun grenades after learning that people were trying to cross barricades around the National Assembly building.
The quarrel is perhaps best illustrated by the hundreds of statues and monuments highlighting the glories of ancient Macedonia, the product of an extraordinarily kitschy construction frenzy in Skopje, led by the prime minister of the time , Nikola Gruevski, before being arrested and sued. wiretap charges.
Alexander the Great was at the heart of most of these projects – and the conflict itself -. The airport was named for him. So was the road that led to the airport. And in the center of the city is a 92-foot tall statue and a fountain known as the "Warrior on Horseback". This is undeniably Alexander.
The Greeks watched with increasing anger.
But the current dispute really has its roots in the wars of the 20th century. After the end of the first wars in the Balkans in 1913, Macedonia was divided by three of the warring parties – Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. After the Second World War, civil war broke out in Greece and Slavic-speaking Macedonians were on the losing side, many being expelled from what is now Greece.
When the Republic of Yugoslavia was formed, it included a territory called "Macedonia" and, when Yugoslavia separated in 1991 after the Balkan war, the "Republic of Macedonia" was created. It has been recognized by more than 140 countries, including China, Russia and the United States.
But not Greece. Athens feared that the Macedonians expelled during the civil war would make claims on the land, a problem that the negotiators for the name deal with explaining that land claims would be unacceptable.
When Mr Zaev became Prime Minister in May 2017, one of his first actions was to make rapprochement with Greece his top priority. He stopped the construction projects of the previous government and changed the name of the airport and the highway.
In an interview two weeks before the vote, he said that the "totally wrong foreign policy" of the previous government had isolated the country.
"It was the biggest threat to the future of our country," he said. "It had to be changed and corrected. The second reason is that the most influential citizens and political parties have agreed to join the EU. and NATO are our main strategic priorities. "
And so the referendum question was put to voters Sunday: "Are you for EU and NATO membership by agreeing to the agreement between the Republic of Macedonia and the Republic of Greece?
Aleksandar Dimishkovski contributed to the report.
[ad_2]Source link
