After the failure of the reactionary initiative, the “decentralization law” that had been approved by the republic’s parliament in the capital, Skopje, is set to be implemented. The legislation recognizes Albanian as an official language in Macedonia in areas where Albanians comprise over 20 percent of the population and grants limited autonomy to majority Albanian areas.

Three days before the referendum’s defeat, Washington recognized the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) by its constitutional name—the Republic of Macedonia. It was a reward to Skopje by the Bush administration for joining the U.S.-led “coalition of the willing” in Iraq. The move angered the ruling class in Greece, reflecting interimperialist frictions in the region.

Albanians overwhelmingly boycotted the November 7 vote.

“I feel like this ballot box—empty,” Neshat Bajrami, 28, who was staffing an empty polling station in one Albanian village, told Reuters. Bajrami had been a member of the National Liberation Army that led an eight-month-long armed struggle in 2001 to press for recognition of the rights of Albanians. Macedonians couldn’t “say one thing and then take it back,” he added, referring to implementation of the “decentralization law.”

The referendum called for withdrawal of this law. Official results showed that only 26 percent of the country’s 1.7 million eligible voters went to the polls, too few for the initiative to pass. At least 50 percent of voters needed to have turned out, and over half of them had to have backed the initiative in order for it to be approved.

The decentralization law grants more local autonomy to the republic’s oppressed Albanian minority. It calls for redrawing local boundaries and cutting the number of municipalities from 123 to 84. It allows Albanians to make decisions concerning schools, health, and jobs in the 16 municipalities they will control. It also makes Albanian the second official language in the new areas where Albanians top 20 percent of residents, including Skopje, where street signs will be in Albanian as well as in the Macedonian language.

The referendum was put for a vote after opposition parties, including the World Macedonian Congress, collected 180,000 required signatures on a petition. Both Washington and representatives of the European Union backed the Macedonian government’s call for a boycott.

The decentralization law is a key feature of the agreement brokered by imperialist powers in August 2001 between the Macedonian government and Albanian rebels. Some 6,000 NATO troops—made up of soldiers from the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Britain, Greece and other countries—intervened after the Macedonian military, backed and assisted by imperialist powers, failed to crush an insurgency by Albanians demanding recognition of their language and other national rights. The revolt was part of a broader fight in the region by Albanians in Kosova, Macedonia, and Greece against the discrimination and oppressive conditions they face. Seeing the inability of the Macedonian regime to force the Albanian population into submission and fearing further instability in the region, NATO officials promoted the accord. Under the agreement, the Albanian guerillas turned in their weapons and joined a coalition government with the Macedonian Social Democratic Party.

The governing coalition remains the same today. The accord granted concessions to the fighting Albanians, some of which are to be implemented under the “decentralization law.”

Many Albanians in the region were buoyed by the defeat of the referendum and saw it as an advance in the fight for their rights. Middle-class layers and pro-capitalist politicians, however, tried to attribute the result to the benevolence of “western” imperialism. By boycotting the referendum, “The people have demonstrated they are willing to live in a multiethnic state promoting European values,” said Emira Mehmeti, representing the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA), which has been part of the governing coalition.

EU officials said the result will make it more likely that Macedonia may be accepted into the European Union, which its government applied to join in March.

Washington’s recognition of FYROM as the Republic of Macedonia on November 4 was the first major foreign policy measure announced by Washington following the reelection of President George Bush two days earlier. Macedonia’s troops have been part of the U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq and its government backs Washington’s “war on terrorism.”

“Today is a great day for Macedonia and all Macedonians wherever they are,” said the republic’s president Branko Crvenkovski on national television. In a message to Athens, he said that “the Republic of Macedonia is strongly determined to continue to build friendly and good neighborly relations.”

The Greek government protested Washington’s move claiming that the use of the name Macedonia by the government in Skopje implies territorial claims on the northern Greek province of the same name. Athens’s EU partners continue to recognize this republic of the formerly federated Yugoslavia only as FYROM. “Apart from our protest,” said Greek foreign minister Petros Molyviatis, after meeting with U.S. ambassador Thomas Miller, “I noted the many negative effects that this unilateral U.S. decision will have.” On November 19, a statement from the Greek foreign ministry warned Skopje that Athens will use its veto power to block its entry into the EU and NATO with its current name. Athens also warned that it will take action against Skopje at the United Nations Security Council where it currently holds a seat.

“The EU has the position at this moment that the official name is FYROM,” Dutch prime minister Jan-Peter Balkenende, who holds the European Union presidency, told reporters. “For the time being, we can use this name as we look at the consequences.”

Successive governments in Greece of the social democratic Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and the conservative New Democracy, currently the governing party, have used the dispute over the name of the Macedonian republic to promote Greek imperialism’s economic and political interests in the Balkans. Greek capitalists are the biggest foreign investors in the Republic of Macedonia. Greek capital controls majority shares in Macedonia’s OKTA oil refinery and is in the process of building a pipeline from Skopje to Thessaloniki—Greece’s second largest city. Investments have also poured into the cement, food and beverage, tobacco, and telecommunications industries and in supermarket chains.

Athens has hoped to use this economic influence to pressure Macedonia to make concessions, including changing its name. In the 1990s it blockaded landlocked FYROM for 18 months cutting off vital access to the sea and forcing Skopje to agree to change its flag and alter its constitution. Since then, about 40 governments have recognized Macedonia with its constitutional name—including China, Cuba, and Mexico, with which Athens has had friendly relations.

Unlike the early 1990s, when the Greek government and rightist forces organized demonstrations of hundreds of thousands across the country with the slogan “Macedonia is Greek,” this time only one rally of 2,000 took place in Thessaloniki protesting Washington’s recognition of the Republic of Macedonia.
 
 
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