THE VOLCANO CALLED “TIRANA PLATFORM” ACTIVE AGAIN

The President of VMRO-DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski, in his appearance on Alfa TV stated that there are speculations that Zoran Zaev met the President of DUI, Ali Ahmeti, between the two election rounds. According to him, the meeting was used to discuss the alleged redefining of the state. We cite part of the statement: “The speculations that between the two election rounds there is a meeting going on in Tetovo between Zoran Zaev and several other persons are becoming louder, stating that at the meeting the support for the second election round is arranged, after which a political redefining of the Republic of Macedonia should take place.”

Taking this statement from Hristijan Mickoski, a large number of the domestic media published articles with a headline in a form of a question whether Zoran Zaev signed redefining of the state between the two rounds.

Speculation vs Truth

In addition to the fact that this is a claim based on speculation, the volcano “Tirana Platform” was also kindled with a speculation that the initiative for reforming the election system by decreasing the number of election districts and introduciton of open lists, proposed by several parties and supported by the President Stevo Pendarovski, is part of the agreement in Tetovo.

However, at the end Mickoski stated that maybe this was speculation, and called upon Ahmeti and Zaev to respond to these speculations.

The announced census is used as the third ember for kindling. According to Mickoski, the census is also part of the agreement which was signed by Zaev, and he underlines that the main objective of the census is to present as large as possible number of Albanians. The biggest problem with all these claims is that Mickoski is not sure in what he says and asked the Prime Minister Zaev to answer whether these speculations – which were actually disseminated by Mickoski – are actually true.

Speculative claims that turn into narrative

Mickoski did not state any proof for in support of all these “claims”. The whole statement is based on speculation. The problem is in the fact that regardless of whether the speculations will be shown to be true or not, the damage has been already done. The Macedonian people is again intimidated with some redefining of the state and drawing new borders. All appeals to coexistence are in vain, while in addition nationalism is incited. The narrative of Greater Albania does not seem to stop.

Such speculations that conspire about a threatened integrity of the Republic of North Macedonia with the creation of the so called Greater Albania are disseminated on the electronic media. They are one of the most influential tools to most easily spread such speculations. The portal Republika was the first to publish such article, while the speculation without any proof was also disseminated by the portals Infomax, Javno, Alfa, MKD and Kurir. If one sums the number of followers on their Facebook pages, they will come to a number of 622,943 followers. The assumption according to some relevant researches on Facebook’s algorithms is that the text has reached 6,5% of the total number of followers, which leads to a number of around 40.000 profiles that saw the text. More indepth analysis will follow soon.

To conclude, this is an attempt by the opposition and certain portals to “prolong the life” of the narrative of Greater Albania. Such narrative contribute towards division in the society, instead of building trust and coexistence in the Republic of North Macedonia.

In comparison, if the Prime Minister Zaev states that it is actually Mickoski who signed such an agreement, who should we trust? Therefore, speculation should not be taken at face value. The media are obliged to check and confirm the news with several sources.