1 Politics is basically a dirty business. And it is to be expected that there’ll be dirty party plots and games, especially before an election. But if your campaign strategy is to create a biohazard in the capital by deliberately not collecting municipal rubbish, isn’t that a bit brazen? Doesn’t this feel like the government has declared biological warfare on the people of Skopje?
Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski says he’s apologised to citizens 10 times so far for supporting Danela Arsovska in the 2021 mayoral race, and promises that when the current VMRO-DPMNE candidate, Orce Gjorgjievski, becomes mayor he’ll have the city cleaned within 72 hours.
And what if Orce doesn’t win? Will the central government punish Skopje residents by not collecting their rubbish? Just as it’s been punishing them for their party’s wrong choice back in 2021. Didn’t the government order buses for city transportation? What if Orce doesn’t win? Will they cancel the order? Or perhaps they’ll give them to other municipalities where they win? Will they block the Council again? Will they refuse to vote in favour of buying new bin lorries?
Ok, so let’s say, even if Mickoski and Gjorgjievski have already counted the votes and Orce has already become mayor, what if VMRO-DPMNE fails to secure a majority in the Skopje City Council? What if the majority blocks Gjorgjievski’s projects by not voting? Or, let’s suppose they also win a majority in the Council, but what happens if Orce turns out to be just as incompetent as Danela Arsovska? Backed by VMRO-DPMNE, she promised 82 projects in 82 days, and in the end she herself ended up as their most unsuccessful project.
And just like that, in 2025, from the planned 82 projects we’ve sunk to the point where our greatest achievement is a bin lorry. In the meantime, here we are in the 21st century, in the middle of Europe, still resorting to the primitive burning of landfills as our traditional form of waste management.
2 Let’s not forget the bin lorries in Skopje have broken down, and new ones haven’t been bought for the past four years. If Orce wins, what exactly will he use for the clean-up in those first 72 hours?
The government’s always boasting about socially responsible companies rushing to lend a hand, from dumping sand in Trubarevo to sponsoring the Pastrmalijada in Shtip. However, the donors remain anonymous, since, after all, it’s not very Christian to brag when you help, yet their names will appear here and there at public tenders.
Are we expected to wait for Orce to win to have our rubbish collected?
Mickoski first apologised for misleading citizens with Danela while promising to turn Skopje into a modern, clean city with free bus transport. And now he’s threatening them with cholera if they don’t vote for Orce as mayor.
Oh, to think that by now we should have been riding for free on the new 200 eco-friendly buses that Mickoski and Arsovska had pre-ordered. Instead, we’re happy when a bin lorry shows up. And we even run after it to catch it.
3 What does the rubbish in Skopje have to do with the Bulgarians being included in our Constitution?
I honestly don’t know. Ask SDSM. Maybe they know. Three days before the official start of the local election campaign, opposition leader Venko Filipche appears with a Resolution to start EU accession talks, setting February as the deadline for passing the constitutional amendments, but only on the condition that the Macedonian language be recognised as an official EU language, without any modifiers, prefixes or footnotes.
That’s ok, their Resolution is great, and God willing, for once our MPS will unanimously pass something that actually draws a few red lines, given that the Bulgarians have already passed God knows how many resolutions against us in their Parliament.
However, couldn’t European Integration have waited another three weeks, at least until 19 October, when the first round of the local elections is over? Why rush, Europe isn’t about to vanish like the bin lorry we run after. We’re talking about rubbish, landfills, pollution, femicides, illegal construction, unsafe blocks of flats, dangerous nightclubs where our children are dying, about VMRO-DPMNE, which has been the undisputed local government in most municipalities for four years and has had absolute power at state level for the past 15 months, about corrupt inspections and local institutions, and SDSM keeps reminding us why it suffered a catastrophic defeat in last year’s parliamentary and presidential elections. As if SDSM’s councillors and mayors were to be elected in Brussels, not back home.
Perhaps they have nothing to offer for the local elections, so they’ll try to fool us with European integration.
Mickoski said he has other priorities for now and will deal with Venko’s red lines on European integration after the local elections. He said that VMRO-DPMNE will use the SDSM Resolution as a starting point, but after the local elections they’ll draft a “real”, or “so-called Macedonian Resolution that will protect Macedonian national interests, something that, unfortunately, SDSM didn’t acknowledge in the past.”
He didn’t explain what was wrong with Venko’s Resolution. It seems SDSM overlooked the fact that there are people with vast experience of Bulgarian passports, namely, the ministers in Mickoski’s government, the MPs in Parliament, VMRO-DPMNE’s mayors and municipal councillors. Only then could the Resolution be considered super-duper Macedonian.
4 New legal amendments are already in force, imposing a 50 euros fine for riding a bicycle or scooter while using a phone and headphones, and a 40 euros fine for crossing at a pedestrian crossing while using a phone and headphones. From January 2026, driving drunk, under the influence of drugs, or above the speed limit will be classified as a criminal offence. And most importantly, I hope it won’t be delayed, the street cameras will finally become operational, and that’s how traffic violations will be punished.
I also hope the government will seriously consider the fact that even during the test period, traffic cameras registered 100,000 traffic violations per day, and that was in just a few locations where they were recording. And the fact that in 2024, 142 people died in traffic accidents.
I remember that the previous VMRO-DPMNE government imposed hefty fines for not wearing seat belts and enforced them consistently. I also remember that during the VMRO-DPMNE era, the smoking ban was implemented far more diligently.
Well, here’s a chance for the current VMRO-DPMNE government to radically change the traffic culture – to enforce strict penalties in the name of road safety. However, it must be done without exceptions – fines for jeeps with tinted windows driving recklessly as if they own the streets and roads, fines for fellow party members too.
Perhaps we might actually remember this VMRO government for something good if it manages to turn around the grim traffic statistics.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
