Polyparty-ism - Search for Common Ground

20
3,700 million, only about 87 per
cent of what we produced at the
beginning. The loss of about half a
billion dollars annually from our
GDP is even more dramatic when
you consider that, despite the
decrease, it made sense to expect
that the GDP would display an adequate
positive rate of growth. From
this perspective, the loss is doubled.
For the sake of comparison,
out of all the nations in transition
so far only three of them (Poland,
Slovenia and Slovakia) have bested
their 1990 GDP, and two more
(Hungary and the Czech Republic)
will join them during this year or
the next. With such a negative
growth rate, the per capita income
in Macedonia has decreased from
USD 2,235 in 1990, to just over
USD 1,800 in 2000, which represents
a current annual loss of above
20 per cent. The loss during the last
ten years was even more drastic.
These indicators undoubtedly show
that pluralism in Macedonia,
among other things, brought economic
regression and greater
poverty to the population.
Ever more painful is the fact
that this economic regression
resulted in even greater social
problems and differences and in an
unequal distribution of the crisis's
burden among the population. We
will depict this with the fact that at
the beginning of the multiparty
system in Macedonia there were
507,342 employed people (1990)
or about one quarter of the total
population, whereas in 2000 there
are only about 320,000 employed
people, or about one-seventh of the
population. Obviously, one way or
another, about 200,000 jobs were
slashed. With the loss of jobs we
now face an enormous number of
unemployed people, whose number
has increased from 156,323 in
1990 to about 350,000 in 2000.
It is not by accident that the
number of eliminated jobs and the
total number of the newly unemployed
people are approximately
the same. These indicators point
out the high cost of the transition
for which the nation has been paying
during the past ten years of
pluralism and due to which the
standard of living has drastically
fallen.
We can present many other similar
data, but they all indicate only
one thing, which is that pluralism
in Macedonia, which marked the
beginning of transition, did not led
to the expected results from the
economic point of view. We will
very likely have to wait for a certain
period, which will probably
not be brief. The lesson we all must
learn is that beautiful wishes and
enthusiasm are not enough to
accomplish anything ,and that after
the initial euphoria we should have
been far more careful, wise, and
cautious while using our knowledge
to pave the road to exit from
transitional problems.
Pluralism undoubtedly opened
doors and created opportunities for
rapid economic development.
However, this by definition does
not mean that the opened door and
the opportunities presented will be
used for certain. We are now facing
economic problems which the
multiparty system in Macedonia
did not manage to positively
address. At least not during the
first ten years. All we have left is
the hope that perhaps in the second
decade of pluralism in Macedonia,
in an economic sense, there will be
far more positive reaction, as well
as solutions that will give credence
to the hopes of the generations
who justifiably-and without making
a single wrong assessment-did
accept and did effect the multiparty
system in Macedonia.
(The author is a
Member of Parliament)
Ten years of pluralism, December 2000