Yesterday’s session of the Commission for Constitutional Amendments finished with the adoption of three out of seven submitted amendments for the Draft Law on constitutional changes.

MPs have the possibility to submit amendments for constitutional changes until the end of the year for the Plenary Session on January 9.

One of the accepted amendments refers to introducing Kosovo into the Constitution, as a neighbour of Macedonia, together with Republic of Albania, Republic of Bulgaria, Republic of Greece, Republic of Serbia and Republic of Kosovo, hence accepting the reality of the existence of the new neighbour Republic of Kosovo.

Furthermore, an amendment was accepted with which in Article 2, paragraph 2 of the Constitutional law, the full stop at the end is replaced with a comma, and words are added that neither determine nor predetermine the ethnic affiliation of citizens. By this, as it was said, a clear distinction is made between citizenship and ethnic affiliation of the citizens of Republic of Macedonia.

The third amendment and of the constitutional amendments the articles 33 to 36, that they do not produce legal action, do not enter into force and are invalid if the obligation of Greece to accept the Prespa Agreement is not fulfilled, as well as to ratify the protocol for Macedonia’s membership in NATO.

There was a dispute over the proposal for having in the citizenship column citizen of Republic of North Macedonia, instead of how it is provided in the Constitutional law – Macedonian / citizen of Republic of North Macedonia. The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Andrej Zernovski, stated that once the constitutional changes enter into force, in article 4 it will state citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia.

Despite the expectations of Prime Minister Zoran Zaev that all MPs will give support to the constitutional changes and the entire process will end in mid-January 2019, the opposition VMRO-DPMNE is not participating in the procedure for the constitutional changes. Instead, they are protesting in front of the Government, with a focus on the changing of the name, but also on everything else that is prevailing at the moment, in a negative context, enough to credit SDSM for all of that.

However, the process itself was not at all easy and definitely can be interpreted as tense.

The start was enthusiastic. The Government in the beginning of the year started the negotiations with Greece, with strong support of the EU. Having in consideration that it was still not quite clear how the process would develop, how the name would be changed, what the benefits would be, there was a need for debates in the public, with the purpose of explaining and elaborating in more detail the historical importance of resolving the three-decade long dispute with Greece. Reaching a compromise was stressed as a precondition for joining EU and NATO.

The opposition VMRO-DPMNE used that period for protests against the changing of the Constitution and of the name, but also against the Law on languages, as well as the already started court processes emerging from the violence in the Parliament on April 27, 2017.

The protests continued and are still ongoing, with other stakeholders also taking the streets, such as the revivors, boycotters and blockers.

The day of the signing of the Agreement with Greece in Prespa resulted with seven injured police officers and three civilians, protestors who threw pyrotechnical material, torches, firecrackers, stones and bottles, and police that retaliated with tear gas at the protests in Skopje.

There were just as much protests in Greece in several cities, including Thessaloniki. The governing partners of the two countries faced the challenge of peacefully solving the opposition by pointing out the benefits of the Agreement and arguing the most common remarks, why North, from the Macedonian side, and why Macedonia remains, from the Greek side.

The Government presented the Agreement for it to be reviewed, while the Parliament announced a consultative referendum. Of those who unconditionally and publicly supported the Agreement, the remark came out that, the remaining who strongly defended the name do not actually know what they are defending. The Government had its own promotional campaign for the referendum, but so did the EU. VMRO-DPMNE and the coalition partners did not have an official campaign, but that is why Janko Bacev and his party did, through something that was called “I Boycott”.

The referendum passed with protests, black campaigns, unreformed State Election Commission, and already rooted electoral irregularities. Nevertheless, it was declared as democratic and according to those who supported the Agreement, it was successful. The turnout was not enough, but the votes that were for, were twice as many of those that were against. And while SDSM, the Government, and even the EU were celebrating, VMRO-DPMNE desperately trying to prove that the referendum was not valid, the turnout showing illegitimacy of the Government, if it continues with the process…

On Friday, October 19, after many difficulties, finally 80 votes for constitutional changes were collected, a commitment arising from the Prespa Agreement.

Since then, apart from the seven amendments proposed by the Government, yesterday’s three proposed amendments were adopted from the independent VMRO-DPMNE parliamentary group, from the Alliance for the Albanians, and from the MP from SDSM, Muhamed Zekjiri.

The entire process involved experts, political analysts, lawyers, but also the civil society. And while at times there was the impression that the political subjects attacked each other and defended themselves one from another on a daily basis, the interest of the civil society associations was directed towards the citizens.

If we exclude those like “I Boycott”, “Revival”, as well as the diaspora that was loudly defending the national identity which, depends greatly on the name of the state, right, the rest tried to objectively convey the information to the public.

CIVIL joined in the monitoring of the referendum process and promoting the right to vote and why the role of the citizen is crucial in such a historic process. Through the media platform of CIVIL Media, it continuously informed the public on the course of the entire process, encouraging various questions, discussions, opinions and views.

According to CIVIL’s preliminary report, the Voters Register will show the weaknesses at the expense of the voting right. Hundreds of citizens reported or were noted by CIVIL’s observers as not being able to find themselves on the Voters Register.

The observers also presented two reports according to which deceased people figured in the Voters Register. Moreover, a high number of observers had acted contrary to the Code of Conduct and the Electoral Code. Some observers of certain organizations accredited for observing the referendum did everything but observe. They noted the voters and carried out agitation.

Illustratively, the speech of Xhabir Deralla, CIVIL, at the first public debate about the constitutional changes, reflected the key role of the citizens as drivers of society.

“I think that the regulating of the Constitution should be done very carefully, not leaving room for direct, and perhaps even indirect division of people along ethnic lines…Since the Constitution is being opened and since Macedonia is largely promoting the concept of one society for all, not to have one society for all ethnic communities, but one society for all citizens”, stated Deralla.

Emotionally, rather than objectively, the problem regarding the name opened the identity issue. Exactly with the purpose to work out these issues that were and still are a source of serious political divisions and tensions in the context of the Prespa Agreement, CIVIL implemented the project ““Losing identity or…?”, initiating a dialogue and debate in the public. For this purpose, well-known politicians, academicians, representatives of civil society and of the media were included. At the promotion of the publication, which emerged as a result of the project, CIVIL emphasized that this is just one segment of the organization’s efforts to help in the process by bringing the Agreement to the attention of the public and tackling the disputable issues arising from the overall political and social process.

MCIC, on the other hand, carried out several research studies during the year on the topic changing the name and the Constitution of Macedonia. In the research “The name dispute 2018” conducted in May, 45,1 % of the citizens believed that changing the name would change the identity, 17,8% considered that the Macedonian identity would not change in any situation. A total of 48,3% of the citizens were against any such change to the Constitution, regardless of whether they are provisions about the name or other issues. Changing the Constitution for defining the international name was acceptable for 18,3 % of the citizens.

With the start of the referendum campaign, according to MCIC’s research, a total of  57,8% of the respondents had said that they would vote at the upcoming Referendum for solving the name issue, of them, 70,8% had said that they would vote “for”. The percentage of those who would not vote was 28,8% and among them, most had said that they would boycott it (59,2%), while 27% having said that they are not interested.

According to the official results of the SEC regarding the referendum, out of 1.806.336 registered voters in the Voters Register, 666.344 had voted, of which 609.427 having voted “for”, 37.687 “against”, whereas 19.221 ballots were declared invalid.

The third phase of constitutional changes is ongoing in Parliament. Expectations are that there will be turmoil among MPs to the very end and that, despite Zaev’s optimism, VMRO-DPMNE and their smaller political allies will remain either in front of the Government or in front of Parliament to “defend” the constitutionality of the state from the government run by SDSM and the Prime Minister.

Biljana Jordanovska

Photography: Маја Ivanovska