1 The whole country is on fire, half of Europe has come to put out the wildfires, the Covid numbers are skyrocketing, while First Deputy Prime Minister Artan Grubi is wondering why there is such hysteria over the pompous celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Framework Agreement. These guys from DUI aren’t even from another country; it’s more like they’re living on another planet. They came off worse than the Prime Minister and the ministers who went on holiday on a Greek beach after the wildfire in Kochani.
How nice that DUI are celebrating. It’s an anniversary. A round number. In that case even the five hundred thousand euros for the entire celebration aren’t worth turning into fire trucks, because there are so many things that we need. It’s not just the fire brigades. Half a million – won’t make a world of difference.
But the biggest tragedy, not only for the Albanians, but for everyone in the country, is that after twenty years since the signing of the Ohrid Agreement, DUI have nothing to offer except a pompous celebration. They’re still at the level of simply counting the Albanians and non-Albanians in the institutions. And in their country, in 20 years, they haven’t managed to prevent the breaking of the most ordinary, almost invisible commemorative plaques of the police officers and soldiers killed in Vejce and Karpalak.
2 I wonder – what can a civil servant receiving a state salary do so much more than his usual work to be rewarded with 30 per cent of their salary? Fine – a reward for the healthcare workers sound logical, for the army, for the police also, for the firefighters, who did a great job putting out the wildfires with what they had at their disposal, as for the ones they failed to extinguish, foreigners came, helped them… But, to reward a civil servant who regularly receives a salary to do their job, is entitled to the maximum number of days during their old or new holiday, and was even paid an annual leave allowance in a situation where seamstresses in private companies can’t even ask when they’ll be given their salary and why they weren’t given a day off on Saturday to get revaccinated!? Even if it were a normal situation, if it weren’t for the staying at home because of Covid and that it took extra effort at the same time to sit in front of the computer on “mute” and cook, what’s so significant about what they’ve done to earn an extra 30 per cent of their salary? What do they mean by “a greater number of tasks in terms of scope and quality”, as stated in the Government’s announcement? Does it mean that because the campaign for the local elections started ahead of time, they now have to work a double shift – a little for the state, a little bit more for the party!?
Service your party machine. As if the rest of us don’t go to the polls and our vote doesn’t matter to them. As if civil servants are the only ones who vote.
How nicely they had worded the announcement. That they would reward them for “achieving outstanding results in serving the public interest and the efficient execution of tasks under their competence.” If what we are facing with as citizens at the state and municipal institutions is “efficient execution of tasks under their competence “, then I don’t know the meaning of “inefficient.” Especially since everyone’s favorite excuse is “we’re not the competent authority.” And now they’ll reward the most engaged employees who are not the competent authority.
The Government also say that as there should be a principle of rewards, there will also be a principle of penalties. I really want to know if they’ve punished anyone that the firefighting planes hadn’t been serviced for two years? And that there are still not enough license plates. And that there are no ID cards and driver’s licenses. And that the passports were late. And that children still haven’t received their report cards. Or will all these things that don’t work bring a reward to all those who had one single task – to make them work.
The explanation for the exceptional engagement of the public administration is as ridiculous as Ljupcho Nikolovski’s Facebook posts about the fight against corruption. They should stop trying to take us in. Simply say, this is a bribe before the elections that we’ll pay after the elections. If you behave. As, in fact, every government has done so far.
3 With such an engaged administration in the institutions, maybe Prime Minister Zoran Zaev was right that the system was working and the Prime Minister didn’t have to be here, but he felt that citizens needed to see him, so he interrupted his holiday in Greece when the domestic firefighters couldn’t tame the fires in the Maleshevo region. Is there really anyone who trusts the system? Those stories don’t do the trick even on Facebook anymore. Even those whose job is to press likes on social media don’t believe the system works, but they certainly hope they’ll be rewarded with 30 per cent after the elections.
Let’s not talk now about the security of the communication between the highest-ranking state officials and let’s not lose ourselves in intelligence stories about how that system worked from the beach in Halkidiki. The thing is that no one believes that the system works even when they see the Prime Minister on TV, when he’s here, let alone when he announces that he’s coordinating the crisis from abroad over the phone and the Internet. What was he coordinating? The fellow-party members made directors, who were also at the beach, or the obedient mayors who spent the money they receive on official cars and salaries for staff employed by the parties, instead of spending it on municipal infrastructure that would be ready for a crisis situation?
In Austria and Slovenia, for example, maybe they don’t have a system that works from the beach as well as ours, but the state thought it was a good idea to send a plane to pick up the tired firefighters who had been extinguishing the wildfires in the Maleshevo region and to bring new, well-rested ones.
And we dare wonder why foreigners interfere in our politics. Why wouldn’t they interfere, when they’re doing everything – from peace agreements and party dialogues to cleaning up garbage and putting out fires. Literally too. We’re lucky that our existence and stability coincides with their strategic interest, otherwise they would’ve left us to burn.
The only thing left for us to do is to pass our laws, print personal documents and keep order. We have laws, we’ll wait for a new tender for documents, and we can’t establish order. In what other country do they install bollards to save sidewalks and bike lanes from cars? And still, they break the bollards again. And no one’s been punished for that. And the ones who don’t punish that not punishing, are also not punished.
And what does the government do? This supreme incompetence, from the smallest municipal enterprise to the highest state officials, will be rewarded with 30 per cent for “outstanding results in serving the public interest.”
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
