{"id":1427,"date":"2004-11-07T08:29:12","date_gmt":"2004-11-07T15:29:12","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2004-11-07T08:29:12","modified_gmt":"2004-11-07T15:29:12","slug":"macedonia-referendum-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2004\/11\/07\/macedonia-referendum-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"Macedonia referendum watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Voters in Macedonia are supposed to decide today whether to accept the re-districting law designed to give ethnic Albanians more power and influence in the government. Unlike the elections in the U.S.<\/a>, this referendum actually can make a difference. If Macedonians reject the government (i.e. Imperial) proposal, they may well derail the Ohrid Agreement and its slow murder<\/a> of that country. Also, EU and NATO may then refuse to admit Macedonia – which actually isn’t a bad thing<\/a>.Western press reports from the area are woefully inaccurate, as usual, but Chris Deliso of Balkanalysis (and often a contributor to Antiwar.com), has put together a list of nine chief misconceptions<\/a> that ought to set things straight fairly well.
\nThere is tremendous pressure to disrupt the referendum… <\/p>\n

Albanians are boycotting it, not unexpectedly, but the Empire is doing everything to interfere as well. Washington just dropped a diplomatic bomb on Thursday, recognizing<\/a> the name “Macedonia” (it was earlier referred to as “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” or “FYROM”), apparently with the intent of influencing<\/a> the referendum. According to AFP<\/a>, the government (which wants the referendum to fail) has gone so far as to temporarily lift the ban<\/a> on bars staying open past midnight, clearly in hope that revelry over the name recognition will result in hangovers and abstinence from the polls.
\nSo much for valuing “democracy,” then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Voters in Macedonia are supposed to decide today whether to accept the re-districting law designed to give ethnic Albanians more power and influence in the government. Unlike the elections in the U.S., this referendum actually can make a difference. If Macedonians reject the government (i.e. Imperial) proposal, they may well derail the Ohrid Agreement and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1427"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}