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July 15, 2004

By Irina Gelevska

Skopje - The ruling coalition in Macedonia--composed of  Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and the ethnic Albanian party Democratic Union for Integration (DUI)--has been in crises for over 2 months now, because of the last laws from the Framework Agreement, regarding the decentralization. The Government paired territorial redistricting with the decentralization, putting this issue in a new, highly controversial context.

This afternoon, after the consultations in the parties, the coalition reached a decision for the problematic city of Skopje, and the towns of Kichevo and Struga.

Kichevo will probably remain in the present limits. Local sources claim that the Government will respect the opinion of the citizens given on the referendum 4 months ago. According to A1 TV, more options are on the table for this one, including the one suggeste by Deutche Velle radio: adding some Albanian villages (but not Zajas, Ahmeti's birhtplace) which would not provide for Albanian majority, but would lower the percentage of Macedonians bellow 50%.

Struga municipality (with majority ethnic Macedonian population) will be extended with the villages around the town, where the majority of the citizens are ethnic Albanians. This would increase the percentage of Albanians, making this group a majority in the whole municipality.

The Albanian language will be used as official language in the capital Skopje, making it bilingual. This is to be accomplished by adding the majority-ethnic Albanian villages of Saraj and Kondovo, which would raise the percentage of Albanians to over 20%.

With this solution, the SDSM and LDP accepted all the requests from their coalition partner DUI, which threatened to quit the coalition if its demands are not met.

The Prime Minister Harry Kostov was influenced by the President Branko Crvenkovski, who won the presidential elections thanks to the DUI-incited Albanian voters. Allegedly, the PM feels obliged to fulfill the Albanian requests for ethnically-based territorial division of Macedonia.

The EU High Representative for Security and Foreign policy Javier Solana allegedly pressured President Crvenkovski yesterday, by telling him not to come to [an already scheduled visit to] Brussels without agreement of the laws for decentralization.

Citizens of Kichevo, Skopje and Struga have protested with road blockades in the last few days, because they are afraid of ethnic persecution resulting from ethic Albanian dominance in the local government. This perception is fueled by widely circulated examples such as the one from Debar, where a Macedonian couple can not marry in their mother language, because the (ethnic Albanian) municipal officials refuse to speak Macedonian.