By Nikica Korubin
We witnessed the consequences of decades-long “concealment from the citizens” of the content and significance of the Interim Accord of 1995 during the process of signing, ratifying, and implementing the Prespa Agreement as a constitutional category. We witnessed the consequences of the “concealment from the citizens” of the content and significance of the Ohrid Framework Agreement of 2001 during the adoption of the Law on the Use of Languages; and we continue to witness them in the extreme variant of attempts to suspend it through its denial to this very day. We witness the consequences of the “concealment from the citizens” of the content and significance of the Prespa Agreement every time the Constitution is abused or violated through the misuse of the constitutional name North Macedonia.
In fact, throughout 35 years of independence, citizens have effectively been manipulated, “kept in delusion,” and scandalized — for a full 30 years — by the political, media, academic, and all other “elites” regarding the essence of strategic international agreements. Because the responsibility for “concealing” their content and the circumstances, reasons, and context under which they were adopted is de facto a classic case of non-information and disinformation of citizens in a democratic society, carried out in the totalitarian manner of “narrative control.” And this is one of the key determinants and preconditions for the success of a “captured society.”
And through this inherited spirit of authoritarianism, in which “someone else thinks instead of the citizens,” citizens never received, in an accessible and understandable way, the obligatory insight into the strategic steps that determine the existence, stability, and functionality of the state itself. The fact that the “controlled narrative” still continues its propaganda, under drastically changed conditions and circumstances, and despite the unequivocal will (and maturity) of citizens for a European future, speaks of the fear (or inability) to abandon a concept that has, in reality, failed. A concept of “concealing the obvious.”
Just as the text of the Prespa Agreement itself is obvious, yet still not widely and easily accessible enough for everyone to verify for themselves: what exactly is the “sin” of the adjective “North Macedonian.” And how that “sin” is “corrected,” what the precise legal term (and action) foreseen by the agreement actually is. Therefore, the “lesson” that no one ever “taught” their own citizens is very simple:
“Article 1, paragraph 3(b): The nationality of the Second Party shall be Macedonian/citizen of the Republic of North Macedonia, as recorded in all travel documents.”
“Article 1, paragraph 3(d): The adjective in relation to the state, its official organs, and other public institutions shall be in accordance with the official name of the Second Party or its short name, namely ‘of the Republic of North Macedonia’ or ‘of North Macedonia.’”
“Article 13: In the event of errors and omissions in the proper usage of the name and terms referred to in Article 1, paragraph 3 of this Agreement, in the context of international, multilateral, and regional organizations, institutions, correspondence, meetings, and forums, as well as in the overall bilateral relations of the Second Party with third states and entities, either Party may request immediate correction and the avoidance of similar errors in the future.”
If this is so — and it is — then why the “storm in a glass of water” over the slip regarding the phrase “North Macedonian partners” in the short message of the new Bulgarian foreign minister, who with undisguised positivity commented on the “nice first meeting” with our foreign minister? Was the target of his disproportionately stormy reaction actually the “technical” (meeting), the “identity-related” (“North Macedonian”), or the “substantive” (“nice meeting”)?
Is it perhaps the case that within latent Bulgarophobia, and the subtle as well as overt “satanization” of everything Bulgarian, nothing connected to Bulgaria on a political level is allowed to be “nice”? Even if it is merely an informal meeting between two ministers who, after all, have the duty to make relations between immediate neighbors, NATO partners, and future EU partners “good”?
And is it not “good” enough that the position of the long-awaited (stable) government in Bulgaria, in the eyes of our “public,” is identical to that of every government (and authority) since 2022, since the adoption of the negotiating framework? Or is precisely that what is “not good”? Because if this is not good, then the “waiting” was in fact merely “wasting time.” Four whole years of it. In addition to the previous 30 years of non-information and disinformation directed at one’s own citizens.
And therefore, the mistake in the message of the Bulgarian foreign minister perhaps does not concern the citizens at all, for whom the “nice meeting” was probably intended as a message of what kind of relations we must have; but perhaps rather concerns the “partners” within the government of the first neighbor (in this case the western one), as a reminder of what kind of relations (of constructed antagonism) must not be maintained. And therefore the “correction” should be made in the name of the organs and institutions of power, not in the name of the citizens.
Because if citizens deserve “protection,” then they also deserve respect from those whom they elected to “protect” them. And respect begins first and foremost through speaking and presenting the truth. So what is the truth about the Interim Accord, the Ohrid Framework Agreement, the Prespa Agreement, the Agreement with Bulgaria, the negotiating framework? The sequence is no longer important when the years have been irreversibly wasted. But the essence remains, despite every attempt at its “concealment.” And it is that essence which determines our present and future.