On Saturday (AEST) Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia’s (FYROM) Parliament passed an amendment to the constitution to rename the country “Republic of North Macedonia”. It is now up to the Greek Parliament to up or down-vote the amendment in order for the new name to become official for FYROM.
Following the announcement we run a poll on Facebook asking how our readers feel about it and here’s what you told us.
The vast majority of those of you that took part -at 82 per cent- feel dissatisfied with the outcome while almost 1/5 -at 18 per cent- are satisfied.
As for the top takeaways from the comments, most of our readers are frustrated with the course of this long-standing issue between the two Balkan countries to the point their only comments is that they are “tired of speaking out when their voices aren’t being heard”.
Some of the ‘dissatisfied’ are still hopeful the amendment won’t be passed by the Greek Parliament:
“Nothing is official until the Greek Parliament votes on the matter – the biggest betrayal is that Tsipras does not have a mandate for this agreement and will not allow a referendum because he knows the Greek people are against it,” one reader wrote.
Another Facebook user argued that “The term North Macedonia is geographical and (at least officially) doesn’t directly denote an exclusive Macedonian ethnic identity. It’s probably the best compromise Greece can achieve. In practice many countries and international media refer to FYROM as Macedonia, so renaming to N.M. will make it easier to use that name rather than the awkward FYROM. Also people there call themselves Macedonians (wrongly), but what can Greece do to prevent it? Gag them? Declare war? It’s time to pull the heads out of the sand and accept a reasonable compromise.”
Meanwhile, several agreed with this comment:
“If the issue was rectified earlier in the beginning, Greece wouldn’t be in the position of reaching a compromise. Leaving the issue for 27 years and more, only allowed the problem to grow to the point where it was beyond repair. Both governments are to blame as a result and the Greek citizens are left betrayed by their own government.”
Finally, with most commentators falling under the ‘dissatisfied’ category there was much backlash towards readers who answered that they are ‘satisfied’ with the outcome which has been perceived as a form of ‘betrayal’ to the public sentiment by some amongst the ‘dissatisfied’ group.
