Polyparty-ism - Search for Common Ground

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for the stability and integrity of the
country.
In that context, it seems that the
most constructive and thought-provoking
ground for serious thinking
could be among those citizens for
whom the given results are realistic,
and do not come as a surprise because
they conform with their experience
from their everyday environment.
However-and this is most important!-
those results do not justify outstanding
optimism; on the contrary, they
justify maximum precaution and even
prolonged concern.
This realization is really worrying:
from every ten citizens of
Macedonia three have lost their faith
in the possibility of living together in
the same country with the ethnic
group with whom they have lived for
longer than their family tradition can
remember,. The theoretical number of
600,000 such cases in a population of
2 million, only further intensifies the
worry and justifies it!
THE POWER OF
THE CITIZENS
The citizens of the Republic of
Macedonia, even after such fierce,
organized, systematic, media-rich,
political, armed irritations, are still
the most mature factor, and simply
have not entered into a wider conflict
whereas every other society (it is easy
but also superfluous to offer arguments
on that at the moment) would
surely have entered into a bloody
civil war, The fact that they are such a
mature factor is a first-class argument
in favor of the relatively high percentage
of "yes" answers to the three
questions! Also the power of the citizens,
their self-awareness and their
political sobriety are surely confirmed
in the electoral results, in
which the most militant political
forces experienced a real Waterloo;
they were defeated with an astonishingly
high concentration of clearly
expressed disagreement with their
saber-rattling . The citizens have
shown the same surety in their power
with their spontaneous and perfectly
harmonious action against the ideas
and calls for civil war, i.e. for the act
of dividing people and territories, and
they have given a lesson to the institution
with the highest intellectual
and moral authority in every country -
the national academy!
Finally, if on the basis of this we
ask ourselves how things stand in the
Republic of Macedonia, we could,
with ample evidence, conclude that the
epidermis of interethnic relations in
our country is seriously wounded and
that even the deep wound has become
scar tissue. But the core of the civil
vital capacity is firm enough, and able
to return to its previous mien, to regenerate
the scars. Their clear criticism
towards government institutions and
the actions of the politicians, their
fierce verdict on corruption and nepotism,
are marked indicators which on
all bases completely nullify the primary
relevancy of the fragmentation
resulting from the ethnic distribution,
and unite the ethnic Macedonian and
ethnic Albanians, and also the representatives
of the Turks, the Serbs, the
Roma, the Bosnians, the Vlachs into a
single grouping of civil and political
citizenry of Macedonia.
Said directly: Conditions in
Macedonia have undoubtedly
changed for the better, with clear
awareness that they were never as bad
as we were afraid they were, and that
they could be even better than we
hope they can.
(The author is a
university professor)
Two years later
Balance of
ethnocultural identities
The Ohrid Agreement
exhausts the Albanian
option that even a violent
clash may serve
as a political platform,
whereas
Macedonians accepted
the agreement
regardless of the feeling
that it has been
imposed by war
Ljubomir D. Frchkoski
Why do certain agreements, although
logical and justified, fail while others,
which are not so good, survive? What is
agreement sustainability based upon?
When transitional conflicts are taken
into consideration, there are generally
two types:
Strategic conflicts, which comprise
the usual political conflicts of interest
within the state and conflicts of
geostrategic importance with neighbors;
and identity conflicts that relate to the
collective, cultural identity of the conflicting
parties. Most often the two types
are mixed into a concrete political constellation
of their resolution or crisis.
The point of the matter is that the
presence of identity conflicts significantly
complicates and makes the transitional
politics of democratic stabilization
more difficult, at times even extremely
violent. The former Yugoslavian con-
Two years of the ohrid agreement, August 2003