September
Hello and welcome. This is UNMIK on Air.
A cross-section of Macedonian political groups are challenging the Decentralization process formally adopted at the Ohrid Peace Agreement in August 2001.
These groups, who oppose the ruling coalition government, have succeeded in collecting signatures for a Referendum, or national vote, designed to check whether Macedonians still agree with the law on territorial adjustments.
These adjustments, part of the decentralization process, are expected to give the ethnic-Albanian minority - who make up about a quarter of the population - greater political rights.
Eli Cakar, spokesperson for the Ministry of local Government spoke with UNMIK on Air at her offices in Skopje. She says among the biggest points of contention in the decentralization process are the merging of municipal areas.
Actuality 0.1 You have to take into consideration
the kind of authority that will be transferred and the fact that a high level
of decentralization is about to take place. The Government decided to merge
municipalities as way of accepting this new decentralized authority. It is
based on objective criteria, to establish municipalities that will have the
capacity to apply these powers given to them by the new law on local self-government.
And with the new law instead of 123 municipalities Macedonia will now have only 84 municipalities. The 3 municipal centers whose ethnic governance will change if the referendum fails and the decentralization process is allowed to continue are Skopje, Struga and Kicevo.
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Still, any delay in the decentralization process effectively freezes the implementation of the Ohrid Agreement says Ana Petruseva, a regional coordinator with the Institute for War and peace Reporting.
Two things disrupted if the referendum passes according to Petruseva - Macedonian integration towards Western Europe and the healing of already fragile inter-ethnic relations.
Actuality 0.2 They have reached not a boiling point but a point that is very
critical given that in the past 3 years since the conflict we haven’t seen a
situation where there has been so much tension, inter-ethnic tensions.
The Ohrid Peace agreement officially ended six months of fighting between Macedonian police and military forces and ethnic Albanian fighters in 2001.
Last month civil demonstrations erupted between police and demonstrators in the southern town of Struga, some say in anticipation of the expected changes if decentralization is allowed to go through and the referendum fails. In short, Struga will become a predominately ethnic-Albanian municipality.
Arben Xhaferi who heads one of the Macedonian Albanian parties, the Democratic Party of Albanians says he does not expect bad things to come from this referendum, but adds that both the opposition parties and the ruling coalition are using artificial fear tactics to reach the public.
Actuality 0.3 “The issue of decentralization is of strategic importance,
because before the war in Macedonia objectively there was debate on the issue
of federalizing the territorial separation of Macedonia. On the other hand the
international community was appealing to save the territorial integrity of
Macedonia, and we decided to go for plan B, which is decentralization, meaning
the government chose to be closer to the citizen, so they can govern their
municipality with more efficiency.”
Many
analysts blame the secrecy that surrounded the 45-day talks between the ruling
coalitions, talks that ultimately led to the final decentralization plan. This
plan, according to some, left the public in the dark about what the coalition
government parties were offering the Albanians.
Ana
Petruseva, with Institute for War and Peace Reporting.
Actuality 0.4 Instead of consulting people, instead of opening a public
debate to explain what does the decentralization means, what it will literally
and practically mean in everyday life of people, they boiled down, the ruling
party Social Democratic Union (edit to) the negotiations down to bargaining
ethnic leaders.
The Constitution says
that for a referendum to be valid and successful, there’s needs to be
over 50 % of total electoral turn out which is about 850.000 people. With
ruling parties supporting the law and Albanians boycotting the referendum it is
not likely that such numbers would be met, say observers in Skopje. Certainly,
the region will be awaiting the November 7 results when the referendum is set
to take place.
And that concludes
today’s edition of UNMIK ON-Air. Stay tuned as UNMIK ON-Air continues to
explore regional issues.