A Game Over A Name

The million-dollar question that’s been puzzling me for a while is whether our Prime Minister, Nikola Gruevski, is really considering a compromise with Greece over Macedonia’s name or just bluffing.

To judge by his statements, nothing has changed from a year ago when Macedonia was kept out of NATO by the Greek blockade.

“We will continue our efforts towards finding a speedy solution”, he repeats all too often, never revealing any substance. “There will be a ‘name’ referendum and for me that issue is closed”, he adds, reiterating the promise he made to voters at the last elections.

Even his short, and judging by the camera shots, very courteous meeting last week with the newly elected Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, in Brussels, revealed few details. Both statesmen avoided the media after the parlay and the press releases that followed were thin.

Since this isn’t going anywhere, I’ll have to move to plan B: analyzing the moves of some of those close to Gruevski in the hope of shedding some more light on this puzzle. By this, I mean first and foremost Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki and President Georgi Ivanov.

The former has been Gruevski’s loudspeaker whenever the Prime Minister wants to avoid direct confrontation with someone from the international community; the latter has been Gruevski’s protégé from the start. Some say Ivanov has been selected to be the scapegoat whenever Gruevski chooses to end the dilemma over the country’s EU and NATO perspectives, which directly depend on a solution to the name spat.

I bet that plan B has a better chance of success. Let’s see why.

Gruevski usually goes quiet when something potentially harmful to his high ratings is about to be announced. He keeps a low profile, as he did after Macedonia recognised Kosovo last year, and after it subsequently established diplomatic relations in October.

In the first case he was nowhere to be found. His deputy led the government session that day. In the second, the decision was passed in the middle of the night, during the weekend. He did not appear the previous day in parliament either, when the border deal with Kosovo was ratified.

Milososki also took on the role of “the bad guy” when the touchy subject of Macedonia’s relations with Serbia was tackled. Moreover, he was the one who always threw poisoned arrows at Athens, or replied to them, allowing Gruevski the comfort of appearing above the fray of petty squabbles.

These tactics have enabled Gruevski to always appear clean handed in front of EU officials, while at the same time he harvests an electoral reward at home from the government’s nationalistic rhetoric in terms of votes.

So, what is Milososki saying now?

Local media carried a press release issued on Thursday by the Luxembourg foreign ministry concerning Milososki’s visit to that country. In it, the ministry said that Milososki had assured his Luxembourg counterpart, Jean Asselborn, that a solution to the 18-year spat could be found within months.

Strangely enough, this is in line with what the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, has been saying, when he advised Skopje to ”seize a window of opportunity” that would remain open until the EU council in December.

Not much time left, eh? At the EU council, Skopje hopes to obtain confirmation of its efforts to harmonise its legislation to that of the bloc, while the 27 EU states will consider whether to announce a date for the start of Macedonia’s EU accession talks.

But there is one potential glitch. Since such decisions are usually reached by consensus, Greece must give its approval, and won’t if there is no prior breakthrough in the name talks.

Back to President Ivanov.

Coming from the ranks of university scholars and theoreticians, this political first grader had to learn real politics from scratch on the day he became president in March.

Many had their suspicions as to why Gruevski chose the anonymous Ivanov for the post, and gave him the vast support of his VMRO DPMNE voting machine, which he has used to crush all rivals for several elections in a row.

Some said he wanted a British-style Queen as head of state who would have no real powers to do anything. Such a ceremonial figure could then be sacrificed if the international community pressed too hard for changing of the name.

Some analysts argue that Ivanov may be the public figure that Gruevski has chosen in order to draw the flak from Macedonians when a compromise name is announced, and in their eyes become “the traitor who changed the name”.

Having left others to be the bearers of “bad news”, according to this scenario, Gruevski as usual will be there every time something good happens, like the start of a major infrastructure project or an award of free PCs for students.

Last week, Ivanov said the process of finding a solution to the name dispute “cannot be removed from the United Nations. It has been hosted by the UN for almost 16 years and lately some kind of solution can be sensed”. He was surely hinting that something was moving after all.

His next step on Wednesday was to invite his Greek counterpart, Karolos Papoulias, to visit Macedonia, a move that has been suggested by many observers as the next logical step if both countries wish to break the ice and eventually find a compromise.

“I’m certain your visit will help contribute to our mutual vision and will definitely give an additional impulse towards the strengthening of good-neighbourly relations,” the invitation reads.

So far so good, I would say. Let them meet and “hang” for a while. Who knows, maybe they will find common ground.
 
That is – if everything about the name hasn’t been secretly agreed already with the helping hand of the good old US and its slick EU friends – and if this whole scenario isn’t just about find a way to serve the public a very hot potato.