1 “Citizens form a human shield to defend an illegal pedestrian crossing on the boulevard near Bit Pazar.”

“Former beauty queen climbs onto bonnet to stop the state from confiscating cows.”

“Rally in support of Vucic announced in Kumanovo.”

These are three headlines from an entirely ordinary Thursday in a country which, as Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski says, “is among the top three, top five in Europe in terms of GDP growth, no matter how much that is ridiculed by certain structures that I call the dregs of our society”.

Then again, how seriously can you take people protesting because the state wants to protect them from getting killed while crossing a boulevard at an illegal pedestrian crossing? By the way, this is the same state that deploys its expensively trained police officers to chase cows around the villages of Kriva Palanka.

And the fact that citizens of this country gather to support the president of a neighbouring country feels like something straight out of The Simpsons. Except the scene is set not in the fictional town of Springfield, but in Kumanovo.

2 That same ordinary Thursday, while the police were chasing cows and arresting a beauty queen from atop a car bonnet, news broke of a spy scandal in the Office of the President, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova.

The prosecution announced that it had opened a pre-investigation procedure following a tip-off about the disclosure of official and state secrets and espionage by an employee of the Office. Yet for three months, the Ministry of Internal Affairs hasn’t provided the Prosecutor’s Office for the Prosecution of Organised Crime with data from forensic examinations of computers, phones and security cameras.

The Prosecutor’s Office doesn’t know whether there was a spy inside the Cabinet of the Supreme Commander of the Army of a NATO member state. Prime Minister Mickoski, however, seems to know something. He says that “those are the spy dregs of society, structures from the past that were planted in the cabinets of some former politicians like rodents. Presidents, prime ministers and so on”.

Which former intelligence structures exactly? Are they from the days of “Blue Bird[1]”? Or from the days of Dosta Dimovska? Or from the days of Frchkovski? Or from the days of Mijalkov? For how long have those spy dregs been sitting inside the Office of the Head of State? For two, three, five, ten, fifty years? Are they from OZNA[2] and UDBA[3], from the historical VMRO, or from VMRO’s successors? Out of the 35 years that we’ve been an independent state, VMRO-DPMNE has been in power for at least 18. And it’s always had absolute power.

And what are “spy dregs” supposed to mean anyway? If someone is snooping around inside the Office of the Head of State, and the Prime Minister insults them by calling them a “rodent”, will they stop snooping? And just like that, we’re immediately safer.

The realisation that the state has no control over its own intelligence structures is more terrifying than the possibility that there was a spy inside the President’s Office. Fortunately for us, though, the Prime Minister already knows what the Prosecutor’s Office has been unable to discover, so he explained that “they are presenting themselves as a group of employees, who send anonymous letters to prosecutors and then, of course, Islam Abazi (head of the Prosecutor’s Office for Organised Crime, author’s note) immediately rushes in to create panic among the public that something is going on.” He then calmly concludes: “I would not comment on these rodents because I think we should forget about them.”

Simply put: employees within the President’s Office are spying on one another. The Prosecutor is hysterical and spreading panic. That apparently justifies the Ministry of Internal Affairs withholding evidence from him for three months. Let them do whatever they like, I’m not interested and I don’t give a damn what’s going on.

3 Mickoski is criticising others and handing out orders, all while he’s pretending he’s not from around here. He knows everything. The only thing he doesn’t know is whether Deputy Prime Minister Arben Fetai is still receiving a salary despite not having shown up for two months.

All week we’ve been asking the Government whether the Deputy Prime Minister for Good Governance has been paid a salary for not coming to work. The Government says we should ask the Ministry of Finance. The Ministry of Finance seems to belong to some other government. And since Fetai is a member of VREDI, perhaps we should ask them instead. Maybe the VMRO-DPMNE Government has no idea whether officials from VREDI’s Government are receiving a salary.

Mickoski said he’d soon meet with Fetai. He warned us that his government would have many more successes, so a meeting between a prime minister and a deputy prime minister from the very same government will count as one more success, much to the disappointment of the rodents. It will be an even greater success when the Prime Minister finally discovers why his Deputy Prime Minister hasn’t been coming to work. And the greatest success of all will be when the rodents realise that the model of “good governance” by not showing up for work is paid for by Macedonian taxpayers.

4 Whenever Mickoski calls for reconciliation and unity, the very next sentence is already about rodents and the dregs of society. I don’t know how he intends to reconcile anyone if he constantly insults people, even those who merely ask him questions he doesn’t like, but I sincerely hope that the Minister of Health, Azir Aliu, remains on alert and keeps his ministry properly prepared after the Prime Minister’s public appearances.

I wouldn’t want to spread panic like the Chief Prosecutor, but with so many rodents and so many dregs, the conditions are ideal for a hantavirus outbreak.

We’re like the Hondius, the ship that sailed across the Atlantic carrying passengers infected with hantavirus. One million eight hundred thousand passengers on board, sailing towards the EU. We’ve been anchored in open waters for decades now. In quarantine. Every now and then, they send us food, water, drinks, medicine… They even send us doctors. Just to make sure that at least someone survives long enough to reach the first port. A port that is so close, and yet so out of reach.

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski

[1] Codename for a controversial police operation and wiretapping affair from the early years of Macedonian independence. (Translator’s note)

[2] Department for the Protection of the People — the Yugoslav communist-era secret police established during the Second World War. (Translator’s note)

[3] State Security Administration — the Yugoslav secret police service that succeeded OZNA and operated throughout socialist Yugoslavia. (Translator’s note)