'Martial Law' Rumour Fuels Unease in Macedonia

Oliver Andonov, the new manager of the remote Jasen military complex, a site which includes a derelict former Yugoslav army bunker, denied media allegations that the authorities were preparing the site to use after declaring martial law to prevent the opposition forming a government.

"I deny all allegations that something is being prepared there in relation to some kind of coup," Andonov told Telma TV on Tuesday.

Fears that violence could be used to prevent an opposition-led government and maintain the right wing VMRO DPMNE and its leader Nikola Gruevski's hold on power increased after the Fokus weekly at the weekend cited unnamed army, police and counter-intelligence sources as saying that the Jasen complex near Skopje is being prepared to serve as a shelter and a command post.

The report alleged that the complex is to serve President Gjorge Ivanov and Gruevski as a "command post for detaining coup plotters" in case the new parliamentary majority led by the Social Democrats, SDSM, overcomes the current institutional blockade imposed by the VMRO DPMNE and manages to elect a new parliamentary speaker and establish a new government.

"The scenario witnessed by army, police and counter intelligence sources would be put into effect if the SDSM and the [ethnic] Albanian parties, who control a majority of 69 MPs [in the 120-seat parliament], decide to end the parliament blockade and elect a new speaker and a government at an alternative [parliamentary] session without the VMRO DPMNE," claimed the Fokus report.

"This would be used by President Ivanov as a pretext for declaring a state of emergency," it alleged.

Ivanov's office declined to make any comment to BIRN on Monday or Tuesday about the allegations that the...