MACEDONIA – Yet another failed US-backed coup
Another failed coup attempt in February went almost entirely unreported in the western bourgeois media and that is one which took place in Macedonia. The evidence points directly at the United States as the prime mover behind the plot to unseat the government. In this case, however, the government cannot be accused of being progressive – it is keen to join both NATO and the EU and is blocked, it would seem, only by Greece’s objections to its name. One policy, however, that condemns it in the eyes of US imperialism is its support for Ukrainian separatists against the US-backed fascist Ukrainian regime.
For whatever reason, US imperialism would seem to have provided the main opposition party in Macedonia, the social-democrats, with secret recordings made by US spying agencies of conversations on the part of Macedonian government figures suggesting their involvement in improper activity of various kinds, including spying on citizens (!), electoral fraud, corruption and all the usual accusations. The idea was to publish this material in order to make the government’s position untenable and force it out of office. The leader of the opposition, Zoran Zaev went to prime minister Nikola Gruevski to disclose the information in his possession, and was to meet with him several times over a period of a couple of months. According to Gruevski, Zaev was prepared to trade the documents if the PM would agree to form a caretaker government that would include the Zaev’s social-democratic party. During one of these meetings Zaev was recorded admitting that the information had been supplied by a foreign espionage service. Subsequently Gruevski had him arrested for conspiring with a foreign power to bring about regime change.
It is rather an interesting turn-up for the books that US imperialism would be giving its support and practical assistance to a social-democratic party risen from the ashes of Macedonia’s former Communist Party in its attempts to oust a conservative pro-capitalist party from office. And certainly since Zaev’s arrest US imperialism has been doing what it can to pull chestnuts out of the fire for him. For example, according to Kole Casule of Reuters, ” The United States cautioned Macedonia on Friday against silencing the media in a growing scandal over coup charges against the government’s chief opponent ” (‘U.S. warns Macedonia not to muzzle media in “coup” scandal’, 6 February 2015).
It may well be that the Macedonian government’s position on Ukraine is indicative of a willingness on its part to cooperate more closely with Russia if its partnership with western imperialism fails to produce results that live up to expectations. This, after all, was Yanukovich’s sin in the Ukraine, and we all know what happened to him!