1 For three days, anti-terrorist units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs have been dismissing students early from school due to reports of bombs planted in several high schools in Skopje. It’s been three days and the senders of the threatening e-mails haven’t been found.
This is by definition a special war. It makes people feel unsafe, it creates panic and it wastes the police their resources. Although, given how capable our politicized institutions are, we don’t need a special war to feel unsafe. The very distrust citizens have of institutions is much more serious than any special war.
2 This time I’m convinced that the construction of the railway to Bulgaria will begin. I can even say that I’m one hundred percent convinced that the 34 kilometers of that section, along with the 5,5 kilometers of tunnels and overpasses will have been built by the end of 2025. Of course it will be done, they have 3 years. The boundless optimism that the railway to Bulgaria will be built has been with us since 8 October 1994, when the foundation stone was first laid. Our optimism peaks every 5-6 years, when the construction of the railway to Bulgaria is announced yet again. In this column alone, I’ve written about the railway more than 20 times in 30 years. And here we are, after almost three decades, optimism has still not left us. It seems that it has surpassed even the one about the “Chebren” dam. Whereas the optimism about the Veles-Prilep road via Babuna has long been lost. Both Chebren and Babuna were first announced in October 1994.
The railway to Bulgaria is a monumental feat of construction. The second generation of Macedonians has been living with that myth. Each announcement of a foundation stone only fuels the myth. This railway is one of a kind.
We’re building the railway, the railway is building us.
3 Thanks to the EU for the 80 million euros it will give Macedonia as aid to alleviate the energy crisis. It’s up to us to decide how to spend the money and whether it will reach its goal without corruption. Thanks to the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen for welcoming the signing of the agreement between Macedonia and Frontex in Macedonian and for tweeting in Macedonian herself.
But, why did these two bits of good news have to coincide with the detested word “North Macedonians” that she said during the press conference with Prime Minister Kovachevski? She does everything right, she shows respect to the Macedonian language, but she says “North Macedonians” once and you forget all the nice things she’s said.
How would foreign states people know that this issue is very sensitive in our country, if someone doesn’t constantly tell them that? It’s stupid for us here to be at each other’s throats – Northerners and all sorts of insults, to call each other names, and not to react outside, where we should. After all, Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron have already apologized for mentioning “North Macedonians”. They might make a mistake a hundred times, but what we should do is to also react institutionally a hundred times. The people who prepare the notes for their press conferences and their statements that there is no such thing as North Macedonians should note that down. Let them note down that there are citizens of North Macedonia who are Macedonians and are very offended if someone calls them North Macedonians. Just as there are Albanians who get offended if someone, God forbid, calls them Macedonians. They immediately threaten to take out the boots they put in their attic in 2001. The way things stand it turns out that the “foreign factor” is more concerned about not offending Albanians, as for Macedonians, it’s clear that they can put up with a lot of insults and humiliation on their way to the EU.
European leaders and officials might think each of the blunders they make as insignificant, but for us it’s an introduction to new political divisions. Over and over again. We’ll keep going in circles on our way to the EU. We keep talking about stability, and it turns out that our path to the EU has become the biggest factor of political instability.
4 During the holiday long weekend, as usual, there were traffic jams at the border crossings. At Bogorodica, to enter Greece, five or six lines of vehicles had to line up in two lanes, but people didn’t know how to do that because the traffic lights that show whether a lane is open don’t work. The special lane for Macedonian citizens doesn’t work, they’ve put up the MK sign for nothing. There’s traffic chaos at Tabanovce as well, at the entrance to Serbia, at the border that connects the “Open Balkans”.
The traffic lights don’t work because the light bulbs have burned out. There’s no one to change the light bulbs. The passport control cabins belong to the Ministry of Transport and Communications, which gave them to Customs, and Customs gave it to the police. Three state institutions, countless excuses. Still, no lights are on above the cabins. There are only angry citizens whose taxes are used to pay the employees of the state institutions who are supposed to maintain order.
Every time I come back to our country, I wonder whether the prime minster, the MPs, the ministers, all those people who are in high positions in public enterprises feel uncomfortable on their way home. For example, you’re driving, you’re driving through Serbia, new asphalt, the grass along the roadside is mowed, the waste is collected, new cat’s eyes, clean road signs… and then you cross the border, first you might get eaten by stray dogs, then asphalt with potholes, dirty toll booths, roadside overgrown with grass and bushes, rubbish everywhere… or, when you enter Kosovo, and you are faced with 12 kilometers of holes, where not even the first two kilometers have been started, although they have already been historically announced like the railway to Bulgaria. No matter the fact they just jump the queue, no matter the fact they don’t wait at border crossings, no matter how fast they drive on the motorways escorted by the police, they must have noticed at least something.
When you’re coming back home you should feel good, shouldn’t you? What sort of a person should you be to not be bothered by the chaos? Are they really not ashamed and think to themselves – hey, this is my job. Even it if’s not, I’ll find whose it is, so I’ll do everything I can to get it done.
That’s why, it’s probably completely normal for us to be angry while we’re stuck in traffic on our way home. Since, our natural state is to live in disorder and rubbish. And the government caters that natural need even at the border, at the entrance of our country. God forbid we think it could be better.
5 That’s why it’s completely normal when the local government of Skopje and the municipal government of Kisela Voda quarrel over a heart sign at a crossroads at the entrance to the municipality.
Entire neighborhoods with buildings have been erected illegally, streets and parking lots are illegally built, Skopje doesn’t have the money to maintain public transport, it’s an energy crisis, a period of pollution is on its way, the city centre along with Grujo’s legacy of Skopje 2014 is literally falling apart, the pavements are occupied, the streets are blocked, but the priority to solve the chaos is the sign “I love Kisela Voda”. Placing that sign is a priority for the Municipality, whereas the priority for the City is to bring it down. Since, neither the City nor the Municipality see anything else more important. A heart at a crossroads.
And why is that? Because someone should take the commission of 136 million euros for the treatment plant – either VMRO-DPMNE or the mayor they brought to power. It’d be better if those 136 million euros never even existed. They’ll use that money to block Skopje the next three years.
6 The Assembly has outdone itself. In just one day, on a Friday, it elected a new minister of local self-government and two constitutional judges. We didn’t have a minister for a month, but we didn’t really miss him that much. As for the judges, they were choosing them for five months. And still they didn’t elect all of them.
What mind-blowing news. You can’t but be amazed at their efficiency. Is this really our Assembly or someone else’s?
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
