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Macedonia president rejects plan to change its name
Macedonia and Greece fail to resolve bitter naming dispute
(about 4 hours later)
Macedonia’s president said on Wednesday he would not sign a landmark deal reached with Greece on changing his country’s name, dashing hopes of a swift end to a diplomatic dispute that has blocked its bid to join the European Union and Nato.
Governments in Skopje and Athens have faced a furious backlash as the challenge of solving one of the world’s most bitter diplomatic feuds hit home just a day after Macedonia announced it was willing to change its name.
In Greece, the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, faced a barrage of criticism and the prospect of a no-confidence vote against his government as he and Macedonian prime minister Zoran Zaev announced the accord late on Tuesday.
Hours after the two neighbours declaring they had reached a landmark accord that would see the tiny Balkan state rename itself the Republic of North Macedonia, the nation’s president refused point-blank to sign the deal.
Under the deal, Macedonia would become formally known as the Republic of Severna (Northern) Macedonia. It is currently known officially at the United Nations as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
“My position is final and I will not yield to any pressure, blackmail or threats,” president Gjorge Ivanov, who is backed by the nationalist opposition, told a news conference in Skopje.
Greece has long objected to its northern neighbour’s use of the name Macedonia, saying it implies territorial claims on a northern Greek province of that name and also amounts to appropriation of Greece’s ancient cultural heritage.
The agreement had conceded far too much to Greece – even if its ultimate aim was the country’s future membership of Nato and the EU, he said.
“My position is final and I will not yield to any pressure, blackmail or threats. I will not support or sign such a damaging agreement,” Macedonian president Gjordje Ivanov told a news conference in Skopje.
The backlash came despite officials in Brussels, London and Washington reacting with unbridled enthusiasm to the breakthrough. Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the accord, saying: “This is really an historical agreement by [politicians] who have shown courage and great political leadership.”
Ivanov, who is backed by the nationalist opposition VMRO-DPMNE, can veto the deal. Macedonia’s centre-left government also needs a two-thirds majority to win parliamentary approval and this would require the backing of VMRO-DPMNE, which is strongly opposed to the accord.
Greece has long argued that the state’s name – adopted when it broke away from Yugoslavia in 1991 – conveys thinly disguised irredentist claims on its own northern province of Macedonia.
The president also said Macedonia’s possible future membership of the EU and Nato was not sufficient excuse to sign such a “bad agreement“.
The appropriation of figures associated with ancient Greek history – not least Alexander the Great – had reinforced fears in a region prone to shifting borders.
The accord must be approved by Macedonians in a referendum as well as by the parliaments of both countries.
But opposition to the deal was also pronounced in Greece.
In Athens, where Tsipras is also trying to negotiate a definitive exit from financial bailouts which have traumatised Greece, resistance to the Macedonia deal was growing.
As in Skopje – where prime minister Zoran Zaev’s leftist coalition was accused of leading the country to national humiliation – prime minister Alexis Tsipras and his leftist Syriza party was also charged with surrendering cherished national rights.
A source in Greece’s main opposition party, New Democracy, said it planned to submit a motion of no-confidence in the Tsipras government over the deal.
One newspaper ran a front-page graphic showing Tsipras, the Greek foreign minister and president being shot by firing squad for treason.
New Democracy will submit the motion after the conclusion of a debate on bailout reforms scheduled to wrap up late on Thursday, the source told Reuters.
The main opposition conservative New Democracy party said it would submit a vote of no-confidence in the government on Friday.
If the motion is submitted, it would be the first since Tsipras, a leftist, won elections in September 2015, testing the unity of his governing left-right coalition.
The motion will test the fragile unity of an administration that has seen Tsipras’ progressive Syriza join forces with the small nationalist Anel party.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of New Democracy, called the Macedonia deal “deeply problematic” because he said most Greeks were against it and Tsipras lacked the authority to sign it.
“We are in a situation that is unprecedented in Greece’s constitutional history. A prime minister without a clear parliamentary mandate willing to commit the country to a reality which will not be possible to change,” said New Democracy’s leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
“We are in a situation that is unprecedented in Greece’s constitutional history. A prime minister without a clear parliamentary mandate willing to commit the country to a reality which will not be possible to change,” Mitsotakis said.
But in an interview on state TV, Tsipras insisted the deal would benefit the two countries and the region.
In a front-page editorial, the conservative daily newspaper Eleftheros Typos called the agreement “the surrender of the Macedonian identity and language”, while the centre-right Kathimerini newspaper referred to “a deal with gaps and question marks”.
“It is an agreement that in two words gives things to us … and it is not a humilitating Versailles agreement [for Skopje]. Even if we could, we would never have wanted that because it would not have been viable.”
Austerity is how governments across Europe – from the UK to Greece – tried to clear the overdrafts, or deficits, they racked up in the wake of the great financial crisis.
Analysts pointed out that Ivanov’s tenure comes up for renewal in April 2019 and his powers as president are limited.
Their strategy was two-fold. First, cut spending on the public sector, on wages, for instance, or on social security. Second, raise revenue through higher taxes and selling state assets. Greece, for instance, has sold its airports in Corfu and Santorini, among others, to a German company.
“He cannot stop the deal but that is not to say he won’t give it a bloody good try,” said James Ker-Lindsay, senior visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. “Ultimately this is going to go to referendum – and it is going to be the people who decide.
Proponents made a variety of arguments for this strategy. It was said that governments had spent too much money, that everyone needed to tighten their belts. The UK’s then-chancellor, George Osborne, claimed that the public sector was "crowding out" the private sector, taking resources and workers away from businesses. Particularly influential was a paper by two US-based economists, Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, arguing that once a country’s total public borrowing rose above 90% of its national income, or GDP, growth would slow sharply.
“The dispute has done so much damage to both countries. What we now have is a fair and reasonable solution and for a lot of ordinary people they will be pleased.”
Critics argued that austerity would stop economies recovering from the shock of the banking meltdown and would make teachers and nurses and people with disabilities pay for the excesses of bankers and chief executives. In his book Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, political economist Mark Blyth showed that austerity had been tried before in the 20th century – everywhere from Weimar Germany to 1930s America – and failed, often with politically disastrous consequences.
For some Greeks the compromise deal over Macedonia was the final straw after nine years of painful austerity under three international bailouts.
“We have lost, we retreated,” said 40-year-old Stamatia Valtadorou, a private sector employee. “It’s one thing to sell off a part of yourself for a bailout and a different thing to sell off your land, it hurts deeply.”
