1 The highlight of the week for me is the announcement of the construction of the Skopje-Nish high-speed railway. Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski and Minister of Transport Blagoj Bochvarski went to Belgrade to sign a memorandum with Serbia, seeking money from the EU for the railway’s construction. It was an event filled with joy, accompanied by wine and song, and the intention to be able to travel from Skopje to Nish by train in two hours sometime in the future was marked with dignity.
Two days earlier, the bridge over the Crna River on the railway to Gevgelija suffered a collapse, leaving us cut off from the port of Thessaloniki. The only train to Bitola is out of service because the locomotive broke down. Our correspondent from Veles reports daily with stories about the adventures with Macedonian Railways. He’s even started contacting experts to ask when the bridge will be repaired. To be honest, it looks like we’re more concerned than the Macedonian government that the entire economy is suffering losses because of the severed connection with the port of Thessaloniki. The Government boasts about the factories in the Technological and Development Zones, but I wonder, how will they import raw materials, how will they export finished products?
Let’s come to terms with the reality that passenger trains are no longer in operation. We can just take it as a force majeure that we can’t reach Thessaloniki, Bitola, Kochani or Kichevo by train. But, what about freight trains? The Skopje-Thessaloniki and the Bitola-Skopje axis has been the main traffic artery for centuries. The first train at the Skopje railway station arrived from Thessaloniki in 1873. Sultan Mehmed V Reshad arrived in Bitola in 1911 by train. The railway survived the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, two world wars and the breakup of Yugoslavia, but it fell apart now during the rule of SDSM and DUI.
Do you think anyone cares about the railway to Greece in a situation where the Government is on the platform for the high-speed train to the EU? Why worry now when 2030 is right around the corner? Besides, Thessaloniki belongs to us anyway. It’s a minor inconvenience that it’s now unreachable. Who’s to deal with the railway bridge over the Crna River, when it’s bad manners not to please Aleksandar Vucic? And everyone knows SDSM aims to please, and aims to slack off.
2 If anyone still couldn’t realise how corruption endangers our lives, in a very literal sense, here’s the example of the sale of state land for the construction of a 17-story building in the hospital complex near the “8 September” hospital in Skopje, almost in the yard of the Polyclinic “Bucharest”, on a site that in the past was used as a hospital heliport for emergency cases, rescue and search operations.
Blocking access to a state health infrastructure with a private, towering building with 400 flats doesn’t mean you’ve lost your marbles, but that you’re deeply corrupt and focused only on the present moment, grabbing as much as you can while you’re in power. How did they get the idea that this state land, between a hospital and a polyclinic, should be put up for sale? This case is the best example of corruption spanning from the central to local government, starting from the mayor, municipal council, municipal administration, the Government with various ministries all the way to the Conservation Centre, and that’s been the case consistently across several governments led by VMRO, SDSM, DUI along with their satellites.
A true crime syndicate.
We haven’t built a new Clinical Centre. The current one is overwhelmed and we can’t access it precisely because of the greed to plough Vodno to make monstrous residential buildings, and they’ve completely neglected the existing street where patients die while they’re still in ambulances on the way to the hospital. The old City Hospital in the centre of Skopje has also been overwhelmed because of the greed of the Macedonian Orthodox Church to use its land to enter the construction business and sell flats and commercial units. The priests, along with the one who granted them the licence to build three twenty-story buildings, seem to think that God will help us if we ever need to be rushed to that emergency centre after a car crash. No one seems to be considering the number of flats, cars and which streets and bridges will be used by those tenants.
The area surrounding “8 September” is the only relatively accessible location that could be used for rescue operations after major disasters and mass accidents, and let’s not forget that in the last thirty years, we’ve had plane crashes, bus crashes, floods and wars. We’ll lose that space too. For what? For a flat? For two flats? For a commercial unit? To save the coalition? For what? We all lose access to a hospital. Why? Because they aim to cash in on the moment while they’re in power.
Disregard the strategic interest that the state should preserve at least one piece of land that would remain its own, if tomorrow, God forbid, there’s a need for it to set up hospital tents or if it wants to expand its own hospital facilities by building another hospital wing. Although, A NATO member state should also take care of the security of strategic facilities. Disregard the fact that the building of the former Military Hospital is protected as an architectural monument. Fine, let that be less of a concern, although a normal country would take care of its cultural heritage. But how are they not concerned about their own lives? I’m convinced that they have enough money to be treated abroad. But what if, perhaps tomorrow, they’re the ones who suddenly have a heart attack, a kidney attack, a gallbladder attack, if they fall at home, if they break a bone outdoors, if they overeat… Where will they be taken if they get sick? Will they be teleported abroad? Will they be treated with a hologram?
So many flats, used to soothe their own conscience that they’re for their children. Are they aware that because of their corruption, their children too will live in a city where they won’t be able to save their own parents in case they need to be taken to the hospital?
3 Then again, why are we talking about trains, hospitals… Our Post Office is in a worse state than our railways. In Ottoman times, when convicts were exiled to Anatolia, letters still arrived back home. In Macedonia, even after successfully passing the screening process for EU clusters, letters don’t arrive because of corruption.
In the last week alone, European Ambassador David Geer said three times that the burned building of Post Office 1 in the centre of Skopje is a protected cultural monument, placed on the European list of endangered monuments, and he’s urging us to renovate it. UNESCO, too, has been urging us for years to save Ohrid along with the lake, but corruption doesn’t let us.
I’m amazed at the persistence of the European ambassador. In this historical Euro-moment, who’d think about some post office building when the central and local authorities are too preoccupied. They’re loading their freight train with state money like there’s no tomorrow.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
