Skopje. “As always in times of crisis, when fateful decisions must be made for the future of the country, we are witnessing fierce polarization between political parties. And just then the search for all salvation in the impossible – unanimity. Resolving the Macedonian-Bulgarian dispute is such a solution today, just as UN membership was 30 years ago. I tell President Gligorov that such decisions are taken unanimously in parliament, and he responds to all my arguments in four words: This is not possible. I, on the other hand, stayed on my own. In an attempt to achieve the impossible, left completely alone, it burned in the debate in the parliament and our politics “, the Republic writes the first Minister of Foreign Affairs of Northern Macedonia Denko Maleski in a material published by the Skopje edition Free Press and submitted without editorial intervention.

The president, understanding politics as the art of the possible, bypassed the legislature and allowed the great powers to bring the country into the world organization of their own accord. It doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to find out who was right about the state’s interests in Macedonia.

Today, the opposition complains that it is not participating in the process of resolving the issue with Bulgaria and threatens that when it comes to power, it will overturn any decision taken without their agreement and contrary to the parliamentary resolution. As before joining the UN, the questions are the same, the answers are the same. Is it best to manage and position together to solve a complex issue with a neighbor? Yes. Is this possible? No. If unity is impossible, then it is true that if the coalition of outgoing Prime Minister Zaev does not solve the problem, it will remain unresolved until the leadership of Macedonian nationalists understands that concessions are needed from our country to start negotiations with the EU. This could mean at least one term in which the responsibility for governance, above all the responsibility of having bread, milk and butter on everyone’s table, will change their minds. Does Macedonia have so much time to wait? It is well known that after bigger countries can follow wrong policies and go back on the road, small countries act on the edge of the knife and are not allowed to correct many mistakes. Namely, they can easily leave the international scene.

The new lesson we have learned is that unity can also be an obstacle to solving the problem. Namely, although there is a certain unity in the parliaments of the two countries, Macedonia and Bulgaria, this is a unity for not resolving the issue of compromise. “We have entered a rabbit hole,” said the Bulgarian politician after the adoption of their resolution in parliament. “We have cemented our position on Bulgaria,” someone said here. With such unity, there is no solution, because there is unity around the red lines, not a compromise solution. There is only intransigence, but no solution. Because, as one Bulgarian scientist says, the problem is that both sides think they are 100 percent right, but they are not.

Democracy, a system in which all the main political options are represented in parliament, does not mean unity and unanimity, but the majority behind the decision that must be implemented in life. Free people and nationalists can and must cooperate and cooperate, but they cannot act in unity unless they pretend to have achieved it. How to reach the majority, not how to unite, is the dilemma in democracy. It is only through the majority that a breakthrough is possible when there is polarization around the solution. Bulgarian unanimity was easily achievable: an exhaustive list of claims to Macedonia was drawn up. Thus, the unity cracked at the moment when these days liberal people came to the head of the Bulgarian government and proposed your solution, as they said, so as not to strengthen the nationalists in both countries. Macedonian unanimity was easy to achieve: by pretending to be an agreement, the ruling party signed the proposal of the nationalists to please the people on the eve of the local elections.

Epilogue. With a majority in parliament, the outgoing prime minister announced his latest attempt to resolve the problem with Bulgaria before the nationalists take power in the next election. Congratulations on his courage, but the chances that he will personally achieve with the little ones due to the time constraints in which they find themselves before the union’s agenda. Bulgaria’s new prime ministerial candidate, under pressure from NATO and EU allies, is also in trouble. It takes six months for this non-historical negotiation methodology to bear fruit. This desire for a speedy resolution of the dispute between the politicians in Macedonia and Bulgaria, who have a majority in the parliaments of the two countries, is our hope. If there is room for nationalists in both countries to strengthen or take control of the government, the decision will not be long.

Translation and editing: Ivan Hristov