Macedonian symbols, the national flag and the arms

After forming of the present Macedonian state in 1945 as a People's Republic of Macedonia it acquired its flag Gules a mullet (or better said 5 pointed star) voided Or in Dexter chief, very close to the flags of USSR and People' s Republic of China. In 1992, there was a public tender for the design of a
new flag, and many artists submit their suggestions.

As a new flag the commission of the Parliament choose the flag Gules a sun of Vergina Or, a flag that was used in Macedonian diaspora some years before. After the known problems with Greece and the international pressure it was replaced in 1995, with government decision without public tender this
time. The only choice was whether the beams should be straight as in the UK flag or divergent as it is now.

After this change many individuals and organizations did not accept that change, so both flags appeared for long time. One of the leading political parties VMRO-DPMNE did not accept that flag and in all municipalities that
local government was governed by this party used the old and refused to use the new one. So during the next two years both flags remained in us, though the new one was official.

Today the new flag is being more and more accepted, but the old flag is still in use and will stay a national symbol.

As a conclusion to the flag section, let me just mentioned that starting from '90 the star of Vetrgina appears on a Azure field on the flag of Greek part of Macedonia (Known as Northern Greece till the end of '80).

Regarding the national arms in 1992 there was again a public tender for the design of the arms. The president of the Parliamentary commission was Academic Aleksandar Matkovski, the author of the book "Coat of Arms of
Macedonia", as a result of his several decades search. His stance was that the Arms should be the traditional Gules, a Lion rampant double queued Or crowned Or. But unfortunately he dies a week from the Parliament session on
which the arms should have been accepted. Anyway he writes a letter that was read on that session, but no decision was made. Actually this commission did not come with bill for arms. There were and still are several reasons for
that. Most of them are political. But here I list them.

1. Several parties among which the leading VMRO-DPMNE has accepted that arms as an arms of the party from their beginning in 1990.

2. Albanian parties were opposing that solution, blaming it for only representing the Macedonians (as people) and not others. These parties never accepted that this is arm of a region or a country but not of a people group.
3. And issue the most used by the opposition is that it is a Bulgarian symbol. The explanation of this follows.

From the oldest known Roll of Arms of Korenic Neoric from 1595 the Macedonian arms is Gules, a lion rampant doublequeued Or crowned Or, while the Bulgarian is Or a lion Rampant Gules. The situation is the same in older Roll of Arms since the Arms of Paul Riter Vitezovitch in 1694 and then in
1701 when he actually did his Roll by cutting the arms from an older version and gluing to his. The problem was that he cut only the arms with out the banner bearing the name of the country, and confusing the arms with lions.
So he made this mistake of replacing the arms. Than this mistake is translated to several other Rolls that were copied from this, such is the Roll of Arms of Christopher von Zeffarovitch in 1741.

So after this mistake we find different Rolls of arms, one copied from Pavle Riter Vitezovitch with the mistake, and other copied from earlier version with the correct arms.

The problem becomes practical when Bulgarian state is replacing old socialistic arms with Or Lion Gules with the new one Gules Lion Or. But this is form late '90 so it is not the core of the problem. The lack of heraldic knowledge is.

So the Parliament comes with "solomonic" solution, not to re-accept the old arms but to use it as acting one till the agreement is reached. And the Macedonian passports do not have any arms.

The historic arms is opposed by second largest political party and Albanian parties, and the Status Quo is now in place.

There was only one proposal, from a parliament member of SDSM second largest political party, but fortunately it was not accepted. His suggestion was just to remove, as he said the socialist insignia from the arms, which is the red star on the top. I wrote an article in the newspaper explaining that
it is not just the star that is socialistic, but the whole concept for arms is wrong.

Although on several occasions the promoters for a different ideas for the national Arms had enough seats in the Parliament to enforce the new arms, but this is viewed as very serious matter and they did not want to go again through the painful experience of changing the national symbols. This resulted that no one has enough courage to go on.

There are several ideas for solving this problem. One is that public tender should take place again for new proposal. Other is that it should be researched further.

As for me, I think that the arms Azure a lion double queued Or crowned Or has all the attributes needed to become the arms of The Republic of Macedonia.
And that all the opposition to this is due to lack of heraldic knowledge and prejudice regarding this arms.

Jovan Jonovski