Yesterday evening, the main opposition party in Macedonia, the ex-Communist Social Democratic Union of Macedonian (SDSM) organised a rally outside of parliament in Skopje calling for early elections. SDSM organisers claims that 50,000 people attended the protest, but as can be seen in this video, perhaps 10,000 at most were there.
SDSM party chief, Branko Crvenkovski, a former electrician, who has been either premier or president of Macedonia for most of the past 20 years of independence, addressed the crowd accussing the ruling VMRO-DPMNE party of leading Macedonia to economic brink and doing all it can to not achieve EU membership for the country. SDSM announced that this protest will be the start of a campaign to 'delegitimise' the government in an effort to place pressure for early elections, which are not scheduled until 2012. The government laughed off the protest calling it a 'fiasco' and are adament that in the interests of stability for the country, the government will do as mandated and serve its full term.
Why is the opposition so silly? Many reasons. First of all, SDSM is desperately trailing in the polls behind the government and has been for some time. SDSM has been in power for a majority of the time since independence in 1991, and the economic collapse they now accuse the government of creating has been a feature of the Macedonian economy for the whole independence era. With this in mind, many Macedonians see that it's highly hypocritical and short-sighted for SDSM to lay blame on all economic ills on the government when SDSM had been in power sufficiently enough to have done something - but didn't. The levels of corruption, nepotism and heavy handedness on the media that SDSM accuses the government of maintaining is actually lower than when SDSM were in power. What this all hides is that SDSM is still essentially made up of the same apparatchiks of the old Yugoslav-era League of Communists, whose political careers were built by corruption, nepotism and careerism which saw loyalty for Yugoslavia (and Serbia) above Macedonia. Under a VMRO-DPMNE government, this old-boy system is no more, so they are desperately wanting the power that they've had for an overwhelming part of the last 65 years back. SDSM also exploits the nostalgia many Macedonians have for the mythical 'good old days' of Titoist Yugoslavia. Unfortunately for these people, they have yet to realise that those good old days that only exist in their airbrushed memories are not going to come back just because the same (but rebranded) party that existed then is around. SDSM does have backing from some elements in the EU as they are seen as being more flexible in making a compromise on the name issue. However it is naive to think that with a change of the official name of the country that there wouldn't be a likewise accompanying change to the term 'Macedonian' for language and people. Many SDSM members have also been prominent in voicing their opinion against the current measures by the government to move away from the false notion promoted in Yugoslavia that modern Macedonians trace an unbroken and pure blood line with the Slavs who supposedly arrived into the Balkans in the 6th century. This theory then in turn fuels SDSM policy in supporting 'Slavic and Orthodox brother' Serbia, even though a quarter of Macedonia's population is Albanian, while Serbia hardly returns the favour when it refuses to recognise the Macedonian Orthodox Church and fully supports Greece on the name issue. The current government has come under increasing fire over its so-called 'antiquisation' programme, which has been promoting the fact that the modern day Macedonians are heterogenous and can trace bloodlines from the ancient Macedonians, the Slavs and all other invaders and migrations to Macedonia. This concept is far more in line with reality than the discredited pure-Slav notion promoted by SDSM, as evident when looking at the Macedonians - even in the same family you can see relatives ranging from Nordic-looking blondes with blue eyes right through to swarthy and indistinguishable from Roma. As it has been pointed out, the number of Serbian flags waving at the protest outnumbered the Macedonian ones.
SDSM had plenty of time in power to actually make a difference and set a path to economic recovery for Macedonia. However, it proved to be a corrupt and self-interest party that was, and still is, perfectly content in remaining in its Yugo-era created sloth bubble. It has yet to show any true vision for the future, and that is why so few people except the party faithful turned out to its protest. Instead of wallowing in self-delusion, SDSM needs to face facts and realise that they just can't gain support solely out of electorate dissatisfaction with the government. It needs to show that it has its interests in the people and not in themselves - credibility they lack. But, they won't. This is why SDSM won't get early elections or even win the next scheduled ones, and rightfully so.
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