1 What’s the difference between the statement made today by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the one she made around this time last year? The difference lies in the phrasing. Last year, she said: “The ball is in your court.” Now, she says: “You need to take the key step.”
The difference is also that, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the European Union didn’t give a damn about the Western Balkans. We wanted to join, they didn’t want us. Now that they’re scared of Russia, and perhaps China too (they still don’t take Turkey’s influence seriously), the EU wants to bring us in, yet doesn’t know how to do so in a way that makes things easier for them.
The Macedonian government should certainly capitalise on this.
But does it want to?
For the past two years, since Hristijan Mickoski came to power, we’ve heard the same things at home day in and day out: traitors, freaks, weaklings with no backbone, molluscs, bootlickers, the dregs of society…
For two years, he’s been repeating the same arguments abroad: we changed our name, we changed our flag, we changed our banknotes, we’re delivering reforms, and now it’s the EU’s turn to ensure a fair process without any new conditions…
When Mickoski came to power two years ago, he did so without a plan to unblock the EU integration process. He promised to renegotiate the negotiating framework with the EU. He also promised to restore the country’s name. Despite all the impressive figures from the statistics he boasts about, the quality of life in Iceland and Macedonia simply can’t be compared.
Even after two years, we’re still preoccupied with “Why did we change the name, why did we change the flag?” That matter is settled. A historic dispute has been resolved, the issue has been closed at the United Nations, we’ve joined NATO, and we’re moving forward with our lives. Does this government intend to lead us forward? Or is its main plan simply to wait for the EU to fall apart?
If Mickoski truly wants to unblock the EU accession process, if he constantly claims that EU membership is a top national interest, then he needs to secure a broad societal consensus within the country. And he should be working on that. Yet, since even after two years he has nothing to offer when it comes to European integration, he’s left with nothing but a platform for internal discord.
And when the government and the opposition can’t agree on what our national interest is, we’re left with dregs and counter-dregs. And we’re expected to preoccupy ourselves with that for the next thirty years.
Are we going to wait for NATO to fall apart too?
2 During the matriculation ceremony at Goce Delchev State University in Shtip, the Prime Minister told the first-year students that even if they go abroad, they should come back home. Because what they see on social media isn’t real life.
Look how nice things are here. Why go abroad?
But do the social media posts by government officials, from central to local level, actually reflect real life? They even pay to promote them as adverts using our money. They try to convince us that reality is different from what we see the moment we step outside our front door.
On social media, there are nice things at every turn. In real life, however, there is decay at every turn.
Indeed, we face daily hostile moves from Bulgaria, unfair treatment by the European Union, Russian propaganda spreading via Serbia… Yet all of that is nothing compared with the hostility Macedonian citizens face in their everyday lives at home, from their immediate neighbourhoods all the way up to the highest state institutions. We are, after all, under attack from within. By thugs backed by the government, by corrupt petty bosses installed by the party, by incompetent managers who don’t do their jobs simply because they have no idea what their jobs involve, and by illiterate bootlickers who answer only to the head of the local party branch, who happens to be even more illiterate than they are but is on very good terms with party headquarters.
We don’t fear war. Peace has already been taken away from us with every “good morning” and “good night”. It’s as if we’ve been sedated, wondering: “Oh dear, oh dear, what are we to do?”
A friend of mine once noted: And what do you do when you’re under attack? You sign up for a crash course in German, get a Bulgarian passport and flee.
As for those of us who have decided to stay, we’ll enjoy wallowing in our own rubbish and breathing polluted air, we’ll drink shit water and pray we don’t die waiting for the ambulance or the fire brigade that set out to save us but couldn’t reach us because local sheriffs had chocked off the access road to satisfy their own greed and that of the so-called investors.
And on top of that, we’ll sit back and poke fun at politicians calling each other bigger idiots. Yet in reality, they’re the ones who take us for idiots. And rightly so. After all, we haven’t shown them that we aren’t.
3 Skopje Mayor Orce Gjorgjievski organised a massive city clean-up in the middle of the week, on a working day, issuing a public call for all municipalities, citizens and even foreign embassies to join the initiative. He says he plans to do this twice a month and that these events will become a tradition and a mechanism for the regular maintenance of public spaces.
The mayor will have to excuse me, but I had work to do that day. Besides, I didn’t want to go out and clean up because I don’t litter. And I regularly pay both my taxes and utility bills.
I’ll go out and clean when I see they’ve started fining people who throw rubbish outside the bins or fail to pick up after their pets, when municipal officials themselves catch the people creating illegal landfills, rather than simply bragging about cleaning up a site after we’ve reported it to them. That’s not a success, it’s a cost.
They stuff the administration and public utility companies with party appointees who don’t even show up for work, hand out fees for serving on management boards, make up jobs for their most loyal party lackeys and thugs, and split among themselves the money from tenders for the very gloves and bags they hand out to us so we can pick up the rubbish. In doing so, they forget that we pay for their salaries, their fees, the machinery, the bin lorry and the made-up jobs, and on top of all that, we’re expected to set a personal example by cleaning up.
Some time ago, at the height of the scorching heat and wildfires, I saw a police officer talking on his mobile phone while driving and tossing a cigarette butt out of the window of the new official vehicle we had bought for him.
Not only do we pay them, but we also have to clean up their rubbish. During working hours, no less. While earning a living for both them and ourselves.
4Amid the usual dregs versus counter-dregs state of affairs in this country, an unusual event occurred: a Macedonian scientist with a global career received a standing ovation during her inaugural lecture at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU).
It’s rare for a scientist in Macedonia to receive a standing ovation. Svetlana Mojsov did just that. A chemist at Rockefeller University in the USA, she was part of the team of scientists that discovered GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1), which revolutionised the treatment of diabetes and obesity and led to the development of the drug Ozempic.
Well, it turns out not everything in Macedonia is bleak after all. Dr Mojsov built her career abroad. But at least we here have managed to honour her.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
