Досега не практикувавме да ја објавуваме преписката на Комитетот со еврокомесарот Хан, но оваа последно писмо кое утринава веке е на работната маса на господинот Хан ке го објавиме заради важноста на моментот за Македонија. Во идните недела, две ке ја објавиме целата наша преписка со господинот Хан за да оние кои ги интереси добијат јасна слика зошто Комитетот зазеде став кој е против постапките на владата на Заев 

COMMITTEE FOR THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA

June 17, 2018

St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada

TO:      Mr. Johanes Hahn, European Commissioner for European Neighborhood 
Policy and Enlargement Negotiations

D – West Balkans

D.3 – The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo

Attn:    David Cullen

Dear Mr. Hahn,

In our recent correspondences I underlined on more than one occasion that Macedonia needs the EU for one reason and one reason only: Not in order to gain access to European slush funds, but in order to become a legitimate Western society by instituting the rule of law as its foundational principle. All of your prior announcements, especially the Pribe Plan, were directed toward an establishment of the rule of law in Macedonia by following the Constitution, the laws, and Parliamentary Rules of Procedure. However, your replies to my letters rather than fill me with confidence, left me feeling seriously doubtful that the EU is sincerely committed to establishing the rule of law and guiding Macedonia toward the abandonment of the Third-World, corrupt, undemocratic, totalitarian practices inherited from Yugoslavia and the Ottoman Empire, where might is right and the law does not apply to those in power.

My doubt was caused by the fact that all those who are responsible for the illegal and unconstitutional acts of wiretapping and other serious violations of personal and political liberties prior to 2006—the people that should have been purged out of Macedonian society by way of the lustration that the EU with the help of its “civil society” allies repeatedly blocked—have found themselves in directorial positions in the state security apparatus or other positions of authority elsewhere in the Zaev regime. Your interview with the Macedonian Information Agency from 13 June 2018 is proof that my doubts were not simple bouts of paranoia. There, speaking on the question of the recent agreement between Macedonia’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister with their counterparts from the Greek government, you state that: “The PM and FM have fully respected constitutional settings, and I can only urge the President to take responsibility.” (My emphasis.)

I find it uncharacteristic for a diplomat of your caliber to be unfamiliar with the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia, and yet to make claims based upon it! This action of yours only adds to the tensions in Macedonia, which are already quite high, contrary to your statements for the Viennese Der Standard where you suggest that the mood in Macedonia is one of euphoria. To this point, the Greek populace does not appear to be content with the solution reached by the two countries’ Governments, either. However, I will only focus on the question from the Macedonian side here, from the perspective of the rule of law.

Your unequivocal support for this unsanctioned arrangement only goes to encourage the violation of the Constitution and the Law by Prime Minister Zaev and his Foreign Minister Dimitrov, and for the authoritarian style of rule by the Zaev regime, which over the weekend, as on so many occasions before has resorted to the use of force in order to prevent the people from displaying their dissatisfaction with the politics of this illegitimate government. This is unfortunately something that as a general rule, you have been doing since the inception of this Government. According to Article 119 of the Macedonian Constitution:

International agreements are concluded in the name of the Republic of Macedonia by the President of the Republic of Macedonia. International agreements may also be concluded by the Government of the Republic of Macedonia, when it is so determined by law. (My emphasis.)

There is no such provision in the Act for the Government of the Republic of Macedonia that grants authority to the Government of the Republic of Macedonia to enter into international agreements relating to state attributes. This authority is defined in the Act for Entering Into, Ratification, and Execution of International Agreements (Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia No. 5/1998). The same law (Article 3, paragraph 2) enumerates the spheres of authority in which the Government may, in the name of the Republic of Macedonia, enter into international agreements. They are as follows: economy, finance, science, culture, education and sport, traffic and communications, urban development and environmental protection, agriculture, forestry, water management, health, energy, justice, labour and social politics, human rights, diplomatic and consular relations, and defense and state security, except for issues relating to the borders of the Republic of Macedonia, entering into alliances and unions with foreign states, or exiting such alliances and unions and other international agreements, which, under international law are entered into by heads of states.

I have quoted this provision in full in order to give you a clear idea as to the spheres in which the Government of R Macedonia has authority to enter into international agreements. Here you can see that in none of the enumerated spheres (including defense) does the Government have the authority to enter into agreements on the issue of changing the name of the state. Likewise, you may see that the enumeration of the spheres of authority in which the Government may enter into agreements in the stated provision ends with the sphere of defense and security, and it is clear that this provision is not open to other spheres of authority that the Government may enumerate upon itself for entering into international agreements, nor may the Government grant itself the authority in the spheres of authority listed in this provision that have been reserved solely for the authority of the President of the Republic of Macedonia to enter into international agreements under its own initiative. This is so, since the Constitution demands that it be regulated by law when the Government may enter into international agreements.

Since the Act for Entering Into, Ratification, and Execution of International Agreements does not allow for the Government to enter into international agreements relating to state attributes, such as the name of the state, I put it to you: Is there a law, and if so what is this law, that grants the Government of R Macedonia the authority to enter into an international agreement to change the name of the Republic? If there is such a law, has this law been presented to the Commissioner for Enlargement or to some other EU institution so that you or it may evaluate the legality and constitutionality of the actions of the Government, PM Zaev, and FM Dimitrov? I would like to point out to you that in the case of the Tzipras-Zaev deal the President of the Republic of Macedonia was deprived even of having his personal representative—the figure that has traditionally been the head negotiator for the Macedonian side.

My hopes, as well as the hopes of the majority of Macedonians, for the sincerity of your statements regarding the establishment of the rule of law in Macedonia were dashed with the illegal appointment of Mr Tallat Xafferi as Speaker of the Assembly, an action that was endorsed by yourself and the EU. We chose to give the EU the benefit of the doubt at the time, as we tried to justify the resort to lawlessness and gangsterism as necessitated by the obstructions to forming a government. Nonetheless, such actions could and should never be deemed acceptable in a democratic state with Western values. That is why you, as a Euro-commissioner, and a man that grew up and lived his life in a Western democracy, ought to have demanded new elections rather than stand by and endorse the banditism that we all witnessed on April 27, 2017. At that time the right thing for you to do was to demand new elections because Zaev broke his fundamental promise to not enter into coalition with criminals by doing just that when he formed a coalition with VMRO-DPMNE’s former partner, the DUI, and then proceeded to violate the Rules of Parliamentary Procedure.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out to you yet again that your words and actions matter, and a poor choice could easily lead to an escalation of the tensions in Macedonia that may result in human casualties. It is my most sincere belief that this is not your wish, although, as I have already stated above, I am beginning to seriously doubt the sincerity your motives. And if you are someone who is sincerely concerned with democracy and the spreading of Western values, then you ought to think twice about your actions if someone like me, a believer in the rule of law and Western values so dedicated to the issue that he was willing to lose all he has—and a representative of such men—is questioning your sincerity and your motives. This is why I implore you to study the Constitution and the laws of the Republic of Macedonia, the discretions of the president and the government, so that you may act as an authentic representative of European democracy.

Furthermore, your statements that your Commission will advance the issue of the rule of law once the negotiations for ascension begin are baffling. You have already endorsed the thuggish, lawless, and patently anti-democratic appointment of the Speaker of the Assembly, and have now in addition endorsed this illegitimate deal on the name issue. How do you expect a regime that has been repeatedly given the green light by the EU when it blatantly acted to violate the principle of the rule of law to convert and mend its ways after it has learned that it may do as it pleases, since the EU is now more concerned with beating Putin to the punch, or more alarmingly, exclusively concerned with stamping out any outstanding remnants of self-consciousness rather than promoting authentic democracy and the rule of law?

Lastly, the populace on both sides of the border has met the deal made by the Macedonian and Greek Governments with loud disapproval. Despite your statements in Der Standard, the news of the agreement between the Macedonian and Greek Governments has not produced good feelings and euphoria in Macedonia, it has, in fact, created yet another wedge in the society and produced another crisis. How do you expect Macedonia’s ascension into the EU under such circumstances to bring about more peace and harmony to the region specifically, and the Union generally? When one sees the discontent with this spurious agreement on both sides of the border, but particularly on the side of the potential new member-state of the EU, one is logically driven to ask: Qui bono? Liberty and democracy are ideals based on the tenet of mutual benefit, while the opposite, that is, the lack of mutual benefit, is the definition of tyranny. The Macedonians clearly see no benefit in the arrangement reached by the illegitimate Zeav Government and their counterpart on the other side of the frontier. They find your indecent proposal of foreign investments and slush funds not worth the price of forfeiting the struggle begotten by their great-great-grandfathers and their millennium-and-a-half long tradition. If you were a man of Christ, perhaps you’d understand that there is something more valuable to a man than all the kingdoms of the world. With the Macedonians that is clearly their heritage, their culture, their name. They have suffered much over the past six centuries to preserve these things. When the Turk invaded, they took to the mountains and deprived themselves the pleasures of the world and the benefits of living along one of the world’s key junctions, just so they would not give up their tradition and faith. When the Greeks and Serbs took over from the Turks and attempted to forcefully assimilate them, they took to terrorism and activism. When the Communists came, they took to evangelism. Through the propaganda, misinformation, persecution, and confusion, the Macedonians never let go of who they are. What makes you think you can defeat something so natural and intrinsic in the Macedonian character with the promise of a low-definition, quasi-bourgeois lifestyle?

As I have said time and time again: Macedonia needs Europe for one reason and one reason only, to help it establish a system and a tradition of rule of law. Macedonia already has access to World Bank and IMF funds; it already has low-paying “foreign investment” type jobs; Macedonian youth and talent has already emptied out its motherland in search for better employment elsewhere. Macedonia and her children need the same sort of Western support today that they needed in 1878, in 1903, in 1945, and in 1991: to establish a proper democracy. If this is not the hand that the European Commission is willing to lend, then the EU and all its bodies should respectfully take their neo-Marxist claptrap back to whence they came.

Sincerely,

Jordan Petrovski

Committee for the Democratization of the Republic of Macedonia

President