Heyyy, there was a Parliament attack here as well. We remembered our attack on the 27^th of April 2017 while interrupting our Christmas Eve dinner from time to time to watch the live broadcast from the attack on the Capitol in Washington. Yep, that’s right. Well, that wasn’t so long ago after all.

The similarity between the 27^th of April 2017 in Skopje and the 6^th of January 2021 in Washington is that the mob stormed the legislative building. And that in both cases the government incited the crowd to violence because it didn’t want to accept the election loss. Donald Trump told his supporters in front of the White House to walk down to the Capitol and take back their country, and Nikola Gruevski went on TV to ask his supporters not to sit at home in their slippers. When their supporters did what they were told they started the attack, willing to die for them, Trump stayed at home, watching TV and tweeting, and Gruevski followed the situation from Vienna even safer.

Up to this point, we’re the same as America. Yet, there is a difference.

The difference is that in Washington, while the attack was going on, the most prominent members of the Republican Party gave up on Trump. Even the ones most loyal to him, who put up with his buffoonery until the end of his presidency. While in Skopje, the most prominent members of VMRO-DPMNE still haven’t given up on Nikola Gruevski, although he gave up on them and ran away. And they don’t intend to condemn the attack on the Parliament. On the contrary. Three and a half years after the attack, they’re still bending over backwards to prove that what happened was actually the justified dissatisfaction of the crowd, that the people who stormed the Parliament ready to kill, are patriots, and the leaders of the party hail them as martyrs.

That’s the key difference between USA and Macedonia. Republicans condemned the storming of the legislative building because the essence of democracy is in peril. They know that if the violence goes unpunished today, tomorrow they’ll be gone as well. In a democracy, it’s simply unthinkable to refuse accepting the election results. It’s OK, we lost the election but we won’t let the country be destroyed just because we’re not in power. Unlike here, when after the 27^th of April 2017 we didn’t see a single influential representative of VMRO-DPMNE say “Not in my name,” the Republicans showed us that “This is as far as the party goes, from here on it’s the country.”

We’ll also see the difference when the trials for the storming of the Capitol start. Let’s see if it takes a whole year to press charges, if the evidence disappears, if the verdicts are lost on the way from one court building to another, if the lawyers withdraw before the verdict is passed, if the jurors retire or get sick, if the defendants are placed in isolation because they had been in contact with someone who had the corona virus, if the hearings get adjourned so all the materials could be translated, if journalists have to prove they were journalists when they were reporting from the Capitol, or were just having a walk downtown. And let’s see if Biden makes some calls so one of the attackers is granted amnesty, or in case he wants a bill to be passed in the Congress.

The difference is that for Americans this date will go down in history. And they’ll study it as one of the darkest dates in the development of the American democracy. And by 2018 we had forgotten what happened to us in 2017. We don’t remember, so that’s why bad things happen all over again.

Zaev, who barely made it out alive, appeared at court as a witness and found an excuse for the defendants for the organization of the attack, because he thinks they were naïve and manipulated by Gruevski.

There can’t be reconciliation by forgetting. There’s order to everything. First an apology, then liability, and even then reconciliation. However, reconciling doesn’t mean we’ll forget.

Fifteen tough guys from DUI decided to sit in the same room and took a photo not wearing masks to show off they were celebrating the birthday of the leader Ali Ahmeti in the new offices of the Deputy Prime Minister Artan Grubi. The same day they posted the photo, came out the information that 12.500 citizens of Tetovo were fined on the street for not wearing a mask. Whose example are they to follow? But, the DUI officials have never been held accountable to state laws. What matters to them is what the party chieftain says.

It’s weird how authority goes to politicians’ heads. Is it power that dazes them so they make moves they wouldn’t make if they were ordinary citizens? Just what were they thinking when they posted themselves breaking laws? It was a nice touch when the prime minister Zaev said that for New Year‘s he’d spend three days at home in his pajamas. Staying at home is for the faint of heart, so he went to the mountains and took a photo not wearing a mask. And with whom? With the Health Minister Venko Filipche, who says three times a day: Wear a mask, keep your social distance, he records videos and sends memes on social media.

And that’s one more difference between USA and Macedonia. People over there trust in democratic institutions. They pay taxes, they pay fines if they do something wrong and they mind their own business. We also pay taxes and fines. But over here, it’s the representatives of the state institutions that deliberately break the law, just because they can. It’s not about the 20 euros they’ll pay. It’s that nobody demands political responsibility.

One more building in the “Skopje 2014” project has been adapted to the Ministry of Not Going to Work.

It’s the same as in “Monty Python”. They had a Ministry of Silly Walks. And it’s a fact that they had silly walks. Artan Grubi was given the Ministry of Not Going to Work. And it’s a fact that over 1.500 people receive a salary for not going to work. In a few years they’ll be eligible for retirement.

5The leader of VMRO-DPMNE Hristijan Mickoski says he’ll work his fingers to the bone in the field in order to devalue and refuse the census results. How? Is he going to storm the State Statistical Office? How is he going to devalue the number of counted people, goods, cars, hydropower plants… fine, as an engineer, let him explain how a devaluation of counted people can be carried out? If they are ten, will they be nine!? Will he subtract men, and add women?

Why? What use does VMRO-DPMNE have in not accepting the census results? How will that help them come in power? Why would anyone vote for a party whose politics is to not accept census results? Because VMRO-DPMNE will make promises that once they come in power they’ll carry out a census on which they’ll accept the results!?

Actually, Mickovski is against everything, so why wouldn’t he be against the census. Opposition out of spite. It seems that if you say to him “It’s Friday today!” he’ll say “It’s not Friday for us. It will be Friday when VMRO comes in power.”

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski