1 Oh, love gone sour. How passionate it was when one year ago VMRO-DPMNE supported “the best manager” in becoming “the mother of the capital” in the local elections. It’s easy to gloat now that Mayor Danela Arsovska is accusing the leader of VMRO-DPMNE Hristijan Mickoski of “not being able to get out of the tender mindset”. And also of failing to change the agreements with Greece and Bulgaria. And the poor guy used to spin the yarn that she ran alone, but he recognized her “successful public aura” and that’s why he decided to support her. He doesn’t know how to make an assessment, which means he can’t be trusted in the future.

However, it’s not time to gloat. It’s time to be concerned.

First, because “the mayor in the front lines” Hristijan Mickoski and his protégé Danela Arsovska didn’t quarrel on ideological grounds. They quarrelled over 136 million euros for the construction of the sewage treatment plant in Skopje. This is not a clash of the right. This is a clash over commissions. Who knows what the guys from VMRO and Mickoski are doing in the municipalities where their mayors are genuine, and not fake independent candidates with “successful auras”.

Second, because Skopje will continue to fall apart. What did Danela Arsovska manage to accomplish in a year, except that she stopped projects, replaced directors, the ones she didn’t replace resigned, she complained that she inherited debts and accused the Government of not giving her money. In a year we should have seen her do something substantial and not just complain. She seized the city and stopped it. What would the “best manager” do had she inherited a private company with debts? Would she have complained, cried and made accusations or would she have worked hard to fix the company? Had Skopje been a private company, and Arsovska the manager, she would have either already started fixing it or if the company and its employees were that bad, she would have liquidated it.

And third, because SDSM still has no idea why they lost the local elections. All of this drama is actually happening at the request of the viewers, but they’re still not aware why said request was made with such a convincing number of votes. It doesn’t seem they’re planning to come to their senses since all they’re doing is rubbing it in: “You asked for it, now you got it!”

So, it’s really fun to watch this exodus of VMRO directors from the enterprises of the City of Skopje and how they accuse each other of stealing and incompetence. But, it’s not a time to poke fun. It’s time to be afraid. Things are going very wrong for the city. This is an act of deceiving the voters who trusted them and taking revenge on those who didn’t. If we can’t steal, we’ll quit.

2 The deadline for the construction of the first 2 kilometres out of the total 13 kilometres of the Skopje – Blace motorway has been extended because the expropriation is going slow and there were other unforeseen situations in the field,  said the director of “State Roads” Eyup Rustemi.

What sort of unforeseen situations? Has a new mountain popped up on the 2km route? Has a new river appeared? Or perhaps there are new unsanctioned illegal constructions that need to be compensated. So, maybe just like in the case of the sewage treatment plant in Skopje, it’s difficult to agree on the percentages for these 2 kilometres. Is it too much?

Bujar Osmani, back in July 2019 when he was the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of European Affairs, announced that “not even a day should be wasted” officially promoting the motorway to Kosovo as the coordinator of the project. In January 2020, the then director of the Public Enterprise for State Roads Zoran Kitanov stated: We will drive the first kilometres of the motorway next summer 2021.

Bujar became the Minister of Foreign Affairs and is no longer the coordinator. Kitanov had to be replaced because “State Roads” was given to DUI. The then Minister of Transport Goran Sugareski went back to Prilep.

And we’re complaining about the motorway from Kichevo to Ohrid whose construction started in February 2014. It’s a lot of kilometres. 57. Kilometres are quite long in Macedonia.

God knows where Mile Janakievski’s shovels are now, the ones he kept in his office when he was Minister of Transport in the Government of Nikola Gruevski. Their handles must have rotten by now. Instead of keeping him under house arrest, they should’ve sentenced Mile to community service to do some digging with his shovels. He would have done the 2 kilometres of earthworks alone. He wouldn’t even need Bujar as a coordinator to cheer him on.

Listen to what we’re saying. We’re talking about two kilometres of motorway in the country whose construction companies built thousands of kilometres of roads and airports in Africa and the Middle East. Those companies built Saddam Hussein’s hideouts in Iraq, which couldn’t be penetrated by NATO’s bombs. But they came across “unforeseen situations” on the way to Blace.

After all, if the director of “State Roads” hasn’t been able to construct a new alignment for three years, let him resign. So what if he’s from DUI? He’s getting paid to work, is he not?

3 Talat Xhaferi didn’t like the question of the referendum initiated by VMRO-DPMNE to terminate the Treaty with Bulgaria. Although, he’s not there to interpret the Constitution, but to manage the Assembly.

VMRO MPs pretend to be offended and surprised. Instead of thanking Talat for making their lives easier. They themselves knew that the referendum, with the question worded in such a confusing manner and with the requirement of 900,000 voters turning up, was doomed to failure from the start.

Now, Levica will come up with a new question. VMRO-DPMNE will support it. However, Talat won’t approve even that question.

I’m only sorry that Talat Xhaferi gave them the opportunity to put on some entertainment for the electorate. As if we’re the only country in the world that isn’t facing problems with expensive electricity, possible restrictions, a heating crisis and the threat of economic collapse, so the Assembly has nothing better to do than listen to VMRO MPs complain.

The opposition threatened to cool down relations with the government. As if until now their relations were warm. VMRO-DPMNE said they’d start an active blockade of the Assembly. As if their blockade until now was passive. And Levica threatened to break microphones. If only the damage Levica can do to this country could be reduced to just breaking microphones.

4 Instead of the 24.3 percent Albanians registered as living in Macedonia in the last census, according to the new tool for equitable ethnic representation accepted by the Government, 29.5 percent of them will be hired, the number of Albanians registered as living outside of Macedonia as well.

The Government has miscalculated the number. Even until now, according to the Framework Agreement, people who lived abroad were employed in state institutions, and received a salary here even though they didn’t go to work. In order to reach the quota in the state administration we’ll have to import Albanians from Kosovo and Albania, provided we can’t bring back our citizens from Switzerland.

We’ll all freeze this winter, but the important thing is that Minister Admirim Aliti’s tool for equitable ethnic representation is ready, although his way of doing the math is not legal. The State Statistics Office warned that in the process of creating the tool for employment equity the only valid category should be the number of resident population.

Still, the government finds it more important how many Albanians will be given state jobs than whether we’ll have electricity.

 

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski