1 I’m sick and tired of the Assembly. I’m sick and tired of the parties that planted those names in the electoral lists so we’d vote for them. You must introduce open lists of MPs as soon as possible. Don’t you plant things like this on us ever again. On top of all our mistrust in institutions and all our disappointment in the people representing those institutions, the last show in the Assembly was just what we needed, starring the opposition which was making fun of the highest state institution. And what is more, on such a sensitive topic such as the financial aid for the companies. Thousands of citizens are waiting for their salaries, while the MPs have been outsmarting each other for months, trying to trick the opposing camp. They will claim their per diems and travel expenses, but they won’t give a damn about the thousands of citizens waiting for the subsidy to be passed. For all they care, they can die amid the pandemic.
We knew the MPs are incompetent lackeys who don’t think with their own head. But now we saw that these guys from VMRO-DPMNE, who are blocking everything, are merciless and inhumane.
The MPs from VMRO shouldn’t pretend to follow the principles and procedures. There isn’t a single procedure that can replace dignity and humanness.
2 The Government too hides behind procedures when they don’t want to get something done. They’re still trying to spin us a yarn about them not being able to change the Detailed urban plan and to harmonize it with the General urban plan in the centre of the capital as things should be, while SDSM is in power on a central and local level, in the City of Skopje and in Centar Municipality. Everything is possible if you really want it. We changed the name of the country, we passed changes to the Constitution, but they haven’t been able to harmonize the plans for four years. That very thing they’ve criticized as bad and unlawful for 10 years. They even got beaten up by VMRO-DPMNE when this law was being passed, and now they pretend they’re powerless to change it. They won the elections because the citizens trusted their promise that they would change the urban policies of Nikola Gruevski.
The subject isn’t about whether something should be or shouldn’t be built at the parking lot at Holiday Inn in the center of Skopje and it isn’t about what should be built. The subject is also not about whether the design of the buildings is attractive or ugly. Nor is the subject about whether the investor, who was sold the public land by the Government led by SDSM, has the right to build whatever he wants. It’s absolutely irrelevant what the investor has to say. He cares about his own interest. Then, who’s to care about the public interest? The state? The City of Skopje? Centar Municipality?
Four years after winning the local elections, we realize that SDSM have put in zero effort to change the urban policies of VMRO-DPMNE and to show they really care for the common good. They’ve sabotaged their own promises.
The previous local government passed an illegal plan. The current central government gave permission for the parcels to be combined into a single parcel and sold the public land. The current municipal government say they aren’t the competent authority to stop that. The Constitutional Court lifted the building moratorium which was introduced as a desperate attempt of the citizens to try to fix something. Well, they’ve really lost touch with reality if they’re asking for our sympathy that they’re powerless, while at the same time they’re asking for our votes for the local elections. Why should we vote for them? Because they sold the public interest?
We don’t vote for someone just to be told excuses that they’re powerless and they not the competent authority. The MPs from SDSM forgot that the voters from Centar Municipality voted in three rounds, their elevators were shut down, people from Pustec got moved in there, and now someone says to them – sorry, we don’t have the power to change the policies you voted for three times to change it. This performance of the mayor of Centar Municipality Sasha Bodganovikj and the Construction Minister Blagoj Bochvarski starring in the play “We’re not the competent authority, it’s all according to the Constitution and the law” gained popularity because it’s taking place in Centar Municipality, in the capital. God knows what sort of things are happening in the municipalities and villages where there’s no one to hear the citizens, nor is there anyone they can complain to.
People have built up distrust and dislike of them. It’s simple, when they get deceived several times – they don’t trust you. When they tell you that – there will be an underground street to solve the traffic issue – they don’t believe you. Because there should have been an underground street on the bank of Vardar. Well, they didn’t make one. Then too, the interest of a private company was protected, and not the one of the citizens. When they say they’ll protect the shoreline of Lake Ohrid as required by UNESCO – they don’t believe them. They laughed when Mile Janakieski brought sea sand and when Nikola Gruevski suggested building parapets, and now you can’t bring down even an illegal café terrace on the beach. The municipality pretends to be powerless, the state pretends to be an incompetent authority.
It’s one thing to be incapable of doing it, but it’s an entirely different thing to play dumb that you can’t protect the common good, when you have the power do so because you’re in power, elected in democratic elections. That’s why; I don’t have a grain of sympathy for the government’s whining that they’re powerless. If they’re powerless, they should resign.
3 If Zaev had listened two years ago, when the media started publishing documents about the wrongdoings of the then Secretary General of the Government, and until just a couple of days ago a secretary of “whatever” Dragi Rashkovski, the least he could have done was to dismiss him from office. But he defended him. And he still does.
Rashkovski is under investigation and under house arrest. But now, it won’t be just Rashkovski who will go down in flames. The party will go down in flames too.
4 Zoran Zaev showed he has much, much greater democratic capacity than Nikola Gruevski. At least we who remember, feel that. But what use is that democratic capacity, when you tolerate them acting like they own the place combined with their incompetence and a demonstration of powerlessness.
Government always goes through several stages before disappointing those who believed in them when they voted for them. At the beginning, they think they can do anything, they promise everything, they’re still enthusiastic for change. Then, they come to the stage when they face complicated legal shenanigans and the politicized administration which is incompetent, sometimes corrupt, and sometimes doesn’t even want to solve that. And then comes the stage when the leader will rely on the bootlickers, the party soldiers and the mediocrities who say “Yes boss, great job boss, you’re the fairest of them all boss.”
And now we’re in the stage – when the Government is intoxicated with the splendour of rule and superiority – there’s no need for explanations, I’ve had it up to here with your questions. And – I couldn’t care less about what the public thinks. But, we’ll pretend to care. And that’s why, we’ll write NGO phrases on Facebook that we will limit the lunch of officials to 1.500 denars and we’ll count how many glasses of water they’ve had with the help of the 10 new job positions “to create systemic measures to prevent and eradicate corruption.”
As far as I’m concerned, it’s better for them to pretend they care than to be repressive, as VMRO-DPMNE was. Now that’s the stage – if you aren’t with me, you’ll be gone. There, that’s how low our expectations are.
Every Government falls when they start thinking the voters are stupid. The Government led by SDSM is now at that stage – let the people yap.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
