The Value of Good Public Relations
By Sasha Uzunov
(Melbourne, Australia)
May 26, 2005
It has been a bad hair month for Australia's large Macedonian
community. The community was unfairly put under the spotlight because
of the behaviour a few crazy soccer hooligans a few weeks ago in
Melbourne. You might recall that violence broke out at a soccer
match between South Melbourne and Preston Lions, which are supported
by the Greek and the Macedonian communities respectively.
Now comes the distressing news that the President of the Republic
of Macedonia, Mr Branko Crvenkovski, wants to build a monument
to former Yugoslav communist dictator Josip Broz Tito in the heart
of the capital, Skopje. Many Australian-Macedonians fled their
homeland because of communist oppression and lack of economic opportunity.
Furthermore, Macedonia's Foreign Minister, Mrs Ilinka Mitreva,
was in Australia last month and met with her counterpart, Alexander
Downer, as well as NSW Premier Bob Carr, and Victorian Deputy Premier
John Thwaites. She also met with members of the local Macedonian
communities in Melbourne and Sydney. Her mission was to lobby the
Australian government to recognise Macedonia under its constitutional
name of Republic of Macedonia rather than the long winded Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM).
The United States recognized Macedonia by its constitutional name
and it has sent the Greek government into a diplomatic frenzy.
The Australian government, which normally follows the United States
on foreign affairs issues such as Iraq and the Global War on Terror,
has this time bowed to political pressure applied by the powerful
Greek lobby.
The Greek government maintains the line that the Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) is but a communist invention by Tito
after World War II.?It has been well documented that an indigenous
Macedonian resistance movement during the War fought for independence
and had nothing to do with Tito. The non-communist resistance leader
was Metodija Andonov-Cento, later jailed by the communists during
an infamous show-trial.
President Crvenkovski's desire for a tribute to Tito in effect
has undermined his Foreign Minister's attempt to persuade the Australian
government that Macedonia is not a communist invention. We have
Athens pushing the line that it was Tito who "manufactured
Macedonia" and now Presdeint Crvenkovski has unintentionally
confirmed that point of view. You could say it was bad timing in
the Public Relations stakes.
But what is at the heart of the matter is not so much Tito but
a battle over history, Macedonia's controversial communist history.
The current Social Democatic Union (SDS) of Macedonia, which is
in power and of which President Crvenkovski belongs to, is the
inheritor of the old Macedonian Communist Party. Macedonia declared
its independence from the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav Federation
in 1991.
In 1946, under the direction of Tito and Lazar Kolisevski, the
pro-Serbian communist boss of Macedonia, Cento was sentenced to
11 years hard labour for crimes against the people. Two of the
judges in the show trial were Kole Casule, who now promotes himself
as a writer/ philosopher, and Lazar Mojsov, later to become Yugoslav
Foreign minister and now living in retirement in Belgrade, Serbia.
Also in 1946, Kolisevski handed over to Serbia a few Macedonian
villages, including the Prohor Pchinski Monastery, where the Macedonian
republic was proclaimed on 2 August 1944. Because of Kolisevski's
legacy, Macedonia is probably the only country in the world that
is forced to celebrate its founding as a nation on technically
foreign territory.
In 1990 a Macedonian court overturned Cento's conviction and he
was fully rehabilitated. No criminal proceedings were ever launched
against Kolisevski, who died in peaceful retirement in 2000, or
Casule and Mojsov. In 1993 ex-political prisoners lobbied the Public
Prosecutors office to launch an investigation into a number of
Macedonia's Communist ruling elite. But intense pressure from then
ruling SDS stopped the investigation. Staff from the Prosecutor's
office was instructed not to open up a can of historical worms.
Mr Stevce Pavlovski, then Macedonia's Public Prosecutor, said
in interview in March 1993, that he would have to put "fifty
per cent of Macedonia's old Communist in jail for treason." For
that reason, no such investigation would take place. When the self-styled
nationalist party VMRO-DPMNE came to power in 1998 it also kept
quiet about the issue, especially when the son of Kole Casule,
Slobodan, became Foreign minister.
Macedonia was used an economic guinea pig; it was the only republic
within the Yugoslav Communist federation that had collective farms
imposed upon it, which proved a disaster. This is why there are
many Macedonians living abroad, especially in Australia, the United
States, Canada and Western Europe.
Mr Kiro Gligorov, an old communist and wily first President of
Macedonia, has distanced himself from Tito's legacy. Perhaps as
the Republic of Macedonia fights for its very survival, current
President Branko Crvenkovski, let go of the past, a tarnished past.
(end)
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