1 Good things come to those who wait. The government has spent half its term waiting for Bulgaria to form a stable government so that our EU accession process could somehow be unblocked, and now that Rumen Radev has become prime minister, Macedonian Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski says: “I have no expectations that the atmosphere will change at all, on the contrary, I expect that same atmosphere to heat up”. Meanwhile, Minister of Foreign Affairs Timcho Mucunski said that, at this moment, “the Government is not ready to take any step towards constitutional amendments”.
For two years, they’ve been claiming they would successfully negotiate new conditions for the start of EU accession talks. For two years, President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova has been lecturing colleagues from EU member states on constitutional and international law and has been seeking creative solutions to our European integration.
Back home, for two years they’ve been complaining to us that they’re repairing the consequences of the criminal rule of SDSM and DUI. For two years, they’ve been starting every single day with a press conference about the life and work of Zoran Zaev and Venko Filipche. I get the feeling they were all too eager for Radev to become prime minister. That way, halfway through their mandate, they could start talking about new elections all over again. And then they’ll wait for the next elections in Bulgaria.
Is that a solution? I expect the Government to offer me a solution, not merely to inform me that none exists.
But the government doesn’t really mind the fact that we’re not part of the EU. You ask the Prime Minister what diplomatic measures he plans to take to spare his citizens the harassment and humiliation at the EU borders, and he says: holiday at home. That’s his solution. Then again, no one keeps him waiting for hours at the border. Last year, when he was holidaying in Croatia, we even sent the state plane to Split so that he wouldn’t be late for the inspection of some street in Petrovec. Besides, half of his fellow party members have secured backup passports and backup holiday homes.
2 In fact, why would the government rush to include Bulgarians in our Constitution? So that VMRO-DPMNE ends up like SDSM?
Apparently, SDSM are still not aware of where they went wrong with Bulgaria and how naively they believed in European principles. Or perhaps SDSM leader Venko Filipche slept through that phase of the negotiations and the several resolutions passed by the Bulgarian Parliament claiming that the Macedonian language and the Macedonian people don’t exist, given the fact in his congratulatory letter to Rumen Radev he wrote that he hopes “the new Bulgarian government will show a constructive and reasonable approach towards North Macedonia.” He’s probably suggesting that, had he been the prime minister, everything would have turned out differently, but “unfortunately, the criminal group led by Hristijan Mickoski is deliberately blocking the country’s European path and creating artificial conflicts with its neighbours in order to protect its corrupt system”.
If Rumen Radev were so nice, he wouldn’t have been the original architect of the veto on the start of Macedonia’s EU negotiations, a veto that will keep us out of the process for God knows how many more years. Mickoski is no good for Macedonia, but Radev is!? Radev, who denies your very existence, who says you can join the EU only if you admit that you’re Bulgarian and that you don’t speak Macedonian, but a dialect of Bulgarian? He’s the “constructive and reasonable” figure for Macedonia!?
Every day VMRO-DPMNE accuses SDSM of betraying national interests, of kneeling, bootlicking, of crimes and whatever comes to mind. Every day SDSM accuses VMRO-DPMNE of anything and everything. In other words, SDSM’s position is that whatever the Government does is wrong. Fine, let them carry on. But beyond all the spitting and mudslinging, there’s one issue on which citizens desperately need unity. And that’s EU membership.
How about you give us all a break from your mutual smear campaigns? Label each other criminals, suit yourselves. But one party can’t accuse the other of being a greater enemy of the state than the bully who doesn’t recognise your very existence. Joining the EU is in the country’s interest. It’s bigger than party politics.
3 The Prime Minister said that the final inflation figure in April would be affected by the fact that “transport services have gone up, and by that we mean low-cost airlines, tickets, which of course affects the final price”.
So next time you go grocery shopping, don’t complain about how expensive everything is. When you buy bread, milk and cheese, just think about how it feels to those buying plane tickets. Cheap plane tickets, to be more precise.
4 In the trial over the misuse of EU agricultural support funds, an official from the Ministry of Agriculture admitted accepting a bribe and received a minimum prison sentence.
However, it still hasn’t been revealed how 50,000 euros ended up in the hands of the former director of the Financial Support Agency, Ilija Stoilev, who’s accused of accepting the bribe and whom the police caught with the money in a garage in Skopje’s Aerodrom municipality. We still don’t know whether he was a courier or the end recipient.
SDSM MP Slavjanka Petrovska asked the Minister of Internal Affairs, Panche Toshkovski, if he was manipulating the investigation, given that the building where Stoilev was caught is also home to Minister of Agriculture Cvetan Tripunovski. Minister Toshkovski replied that several other former officials also live in the same building.
What was Stoilev doing in a garage beneath a building where he doesn’t live? Maybe he was delivering the money to a former official. Maybe Stoilev from VMRO-DPMNE owed someone from SDSM and went there to settle his debt.
Or maybe he wanted to buy a parking space. Parking in Skopje is a serious problem.
What else could it be? That’s the only logical explanation. Otherwise, why would anyone be wandering through basements carrying 50,000 euros? Unless he too was searching for creative solutions to get out of the garage. Out of this basement with a view of the EU.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
