1 Have you, by chance, heard of exclusive party stores where special prices are available only to members of VMRO-DPMNE and its coalition? If Prime Minister Mickoski and Minister of Finance Gordana Dimitrieska-Kochoska are trying to convince us that the standard of living is rising despite the increase in inflation, they might as well stop wasting time on their loyal voters. Those people will be convinced the standard is rising simply because the party says so.

On the other hand, if the standard of living is increasing, then there’s no point in SDSM trying to convince people they’re sinking into poverty. Now that citizens are supposedly richer under VMRO-DPMNE, why should they care if SDSM insists they’re getting poorer.

There’s no point in the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance telling us numbers and percentages, insisting “salary growth has doubled compared to the period when SDSM was in power” and that “the standard of living hasn’t declined, on the contrary, it has improved compared to the period when the opposition was in power.” Simply put, when it comes to the standard of living, it’s absurd for someone to try to convince us about when we lived better. Both the government and the opposition should stop wasting their breath, because unlike all the other tales they spin, this is one area where each of us has our own reality check. Once, when our salary hits the account. And then again every time we go the supermarket.

2 The government is hellbent on convincing us that our standard is on the rise, but it won’t openly call the start of the pre-election campaign as a Mayors’ Fair. They really excel at coming up with flashy names and events. So here it is – a Fair – Report by the VMRO-DPMNE Mayors: Four Years of Work for You. But they also excel at coming up with ways to sidestep the Electoral Code. This way, the campaign for the local elections can legally start before the actual campaign.

At the Fair, the current mayors, most of whom are seeking re-election, presented their reports.

Whatever. A report is a report. But I was confused by the fact they called the event a fair. After all, the word fair suggests that they’ll present innovations, new products, new models, improved variations of the old models… It implies visitors come, look at the models, ask about performance, sign up for waiting lists to buy the product, leave a deposit, sign contracts…

And what exactly happens at a Mayors’ Fair? Picture this: an investor turns up and picks out a mayor. He says: I like this model, save it for me until after the elections. And Mickoski, as head of commerce, replies: Put your name on the list and once the new model is released, it’ll be available for you.

What about the deposit? Do they leave one? We’ll find out when the party’s donation records are published and how much of a deposit each investor left.

3 The VMRO-DPMNE Mayors’ Fair wasn’t complete. The main, and most expensive, exhibit was missing – the mayor of Skopje, Danela Arsovska. She’s the only one who didn’t present a report. Although, in this case, VMRO-DPMNE was supposed to be reporting to the citizens of Skopje for deceiving them into voting for her four years ago.

The main topic of family discussions across Skopje’s neighbourhoods this summer has been: Has the bin lorry come to collect the rubbish? And when it does, people run after it, urging it to take their bins too, because it doesn’t collect all the rubbish.

Even the Prime Minister said that hygiene will be one of the main topics in the local elections, and not just in Skopje.

It turned out Danela Arsovska wasn’t capable of cleaning up the rubbish. But VMRO-DPMNE, the party that brought her to power, holds the majority in the Skopje City Council, controls all the management boards of the city enterprises, and enjoys absolute power in most Skopje municipalities, has this very intention – to leave us suffocating in rubbish all summer. So that, once they win the elections, the city would be sparkling clean the very next day, demonstrating how capable they are. In the meantime, exhausted and poisoned by the stench spreading from the bins and the smoke from burning illegal landfills, we’ll forget that these very hygiene experts from VMRO-DPMNE, who elected “the mother of the city” and “the best manager”, fell apart over money and left her to ruin and set the capital back. And so, after we fall apart with memory, we’ll rejoice that VMRO-DPMNE will come to save us from VMRO-DPMNE by announcing that the rubbish will be collected in a historic fashion, like never before.

A bright new chapter will begin when the VMRO-DPMNE candidate is replaced by a VMRO-DPMNE candidate.

That’s how far we’ve fallen. In 2025, in the capital of a NATO member state and EU candidate country, our top priority in the local elections is to have a bin lorry big enough to collect our own rubbish, not just the one of our neighbours.

The real question isn’t whether we live in a city or a village. It’s whether we’re actually living in this century.

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski