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Last modified: 2019-09-08 by ivan sache
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A report by the North Macedonia news agency MIA (16 November 2009) says that the law suppressing the red star from the national coat of arms was passed on 15 November 2009 by the Parliament; 80 representatives voted for, 18 against.
The law was published in the official gazette on
17 November 2009 and became valid on 25 November 2009. Since that date
the new, starless coat of arms is valid, although the institutions are
given certain amount of time to adapt. The deadline set for the state
institutions and like to start using it is one year since the law
validity date, so until 25 November 2010. For certain documents it is given
longer deadline, two and even five years.
The VMRO-NP party is collecting signatures to get the old coat of arms of Macedonia ("Gules a lion or") restored as the national coat of arms.
Željko Heimer, Valentin Poposki, Jens Pattke, Esteban Rivera & Ivan Sache, 26 January 2010
Former coat of arms of Macedonia, 1946-2009 - Image by Željko Heimer, 4 October 2004, adapted from WIPO IPDL database
The coat of arms of Socialist Macedonia used until 2009 is prescribed by Act on the Coat of Arms of the People's Republic of Macedonia, adopted by the People's Assembly of the People's Republic of Macedonia on its second extraordinary session held on July 27, 1946, later on altered by Article 8 of the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, as follows:
The coat of arms is framed by a garland of ears of wheat, tobacco and poppy, tied by a ribbon with the pattern of a traditional costume. In the centre of such a circular space there are mountains, rivers, lakes and the sun; where the ears join there is a red five-pointed star. All this represents "the richness of our country, the struggle and the freedom.
This coat of arms was retained as the coat of arms of the Republic of Macedonia after independence until 2009.
Željko Heimer, 1 January 2010
The Republic of Macedonia still used the emblem of the People's Republic of Macedonia,
adopted by the Parliament on 27 July 1946 and which was designed in
the same pattern like the other socialistic countries. The design is
based on the emblem of the USSR.
Unlike the majority of the socialistic republics that had incorporated
their traditional coat of arms in the new emblem, Macedonia has
adopted a new landscape design, falling in the same category with
People's Republics of Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and
Slovenia.
This emblem represents the landscape characteristics of Macedonia: the
mountains, the rivers, fields and the sun. The wreath represents the
crops and is made of wheat, tobacco, cotton and poppies. On the bottom
there is a ribbon with characteristic embroidery, and on top there is
the five point red star, the symbol of the ruling ideology.
With the independence and the new constitution in 1991, the issue of
the national symbols arose.
The national anthem remained the same. The new flag was adopted: Red,
a gold sun, often referred to as star of Vergina. Due to the dispute
with the Republic of Greece, it was replaced by another, also
displaying a golden sun on red.
The issue for the new coat of arms appeared to be more complex. The
commision was appointed and an open public tender attempted to find
solution for the new design. Most of the designs sent in were
connected to the historical arms of land of Macedonia, Gules, a double
queued crowned lion or (a yellow lion with double tail and crown, on a
red field). This was mainly based on the works and research of Professor
Aleksandar Matkovski, published in its book Coat of Arms of
Macedonia. His resurch has shown that the traditional arms of
Macedonia apperas to be the golden lion, traced down to the Armory of
Korenić-Neorić dating 1595.
One of the most acceptable design was by Miroslav Grcev, Professor of
Architecture, based on the traditional coat of arms of Macedonia. But
this proposal didn't have political consensus due to several reasons
described in the next paragraph, and therefore didn't even reach the
Parliament. This proposal was raised several more times but with no
success.
Opposition to this historical arms was mainly argumenting their
standpoint with the following:
- several parties among which the leading VMRO-DPMNE had adopted
those arms as their party arms from their beginning in 1990.
- 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.
- the 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 Korenić-Neorić 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
without the banner bearing the name of the country, and confused the
arms with lions.
So he made the mistake of replacing the arms. Then the mistake was
translated to several other rolls that were copied from this, such as
the Roll of Arms of Christopher von Zeffarovitch in 1741.
Since then 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 became practical when Bulgarian state replaced the old
socialistic arms with a new one: Gules a lion or. But this happened in the late 1990s so it is not the core of the problem. The lack of heraldic
knowledge is.
However, there have been several attempts to conclude this open issue.
Several suggestions were made:
- one was to recognize the design of the lion used by the main political
party VMRO-DPMNE and other parties with the same prefix. This was
pursued several times by various VMRO prefixed parties.
- a second was only to remove the star from the present emblem, mainly
pursued by Nikola Popovski, the present day President of the Parliament.
- the third, was to place the present landscape motif on a shield
(the so-called Slovene solution; Republic of Slovenia has used this
model, placing the mount from the old socialistic landscape emblem on a
shield, but adding the three stars from the traditional one).
There were two other similar suggestions, to adopt the motive from the
flag. First, using the golden 16-pointed sun, which bears letter M and
to wavy lines beneath. Second, to use the new design of the flag,
placed on a shield which was to be encircled with two oak branches.
Jovan Jonovski, 4 October 2006
