1 The government has increased the workers’ salaries. Well, now they should increase the salaries of work-dodgers. UPOZ, the Trade Union of Civil and Public Servants in the ministries, the Government, the Parliament and all sorts of known and unknown agencies, institutes, administrations have threatened to organize protests, because some of their members may happen to have a slightly higher salary than the recently increased minimum salary of 18,000 denars, which according to them would make them feel “underappreciated and humiliated”.
We’re not talking about teachers, health care workers, police officers, soldiers who are paid from the budget. We’re talking about a huge army of junior and senior clerks, assistants, counsellors of the assistants, drivers, secretaries and made-up job positions, an army which is hired by the parties when they come to power. Wherever they’ve been hired, they been hired on party merit or based on their ethnicity and whenever you need them, they’re not there for you. They find it humiliating to have a slightly higher salary than the workers’ minimum salary. Is it not humiliating that workers on a minimum salary already earn enough money for the salaries of the public administration?
They consider themselves a privileged class in such a shameless manner that they no longer even hide it, so they are bold enough to let the Union say the words “underappreciated” and “humiliated” because the workers who make it possible for them to even get their salary had theirs increased. They’re acting tough. They’re pulling their weight. God knows how many chain dances they’ve danced at Komitadji evenings, how many posters they’ve put up, how many rallies they’ve waved flags at, how many hours they’ve spent online trolling people on social media, how much money they’ve given to local party overlords. And now parties must maintain that particular body of voters. It’s not public administration. They’re public voters. It’s party administration sold as public administration. It’s supposed to service the needs of citizens, but in reality it services the needs of the party that hired them. The citizens’ needs remain not serviced. They begged them to show up to work, during the pandemic they didn’t even go to work, then it turned out that the state and the municipalities were doing ok even without them, and after all that time staying at home they even used their paid holiday, they’re now asking to be paid annual leave allowance, no one can be fired for not working, and the ones who did get fired were brought back by the court and even claimed back pay. Everything that’s done in this country is done so they’d be happy and satisfied. So they’d vote.
Subsidies will be given endlessly because people need to vote, that’s been the motto of every government so far.
2 Apparently salaries and preferential access to state tenders aren’t enough to maintain the power source of their votes. Where the money from the minimum salaries of workers went can be seen in the case of Tetovo. There, although there are 300 full-time employees in the municipal administration, former mayor Teuta Arifi signed part-time contracts with another 544 people. The full-time employees weren’t doing their job, to the point that part-time workers had to be hired.
However, the new mayor Bilal Kasami discovered that in 2021 alone, out of those 554 part-time employees, 224 did nothing. Plus, according to the payroll lists, it turned out that very few Macedonians had something to offer to multiethnic Tetovo, so Teuta didn’t really do much to follow the Badinter principle and equitable representation in terms of the payments. What she did however was to pay salaries to people who live abroad. And it’s perfectly normal that they couldn’t do the work for the wages they received. Imagine having to come here all the way from Switzerland every day.
In the city where there’s no drinking water, which is suffocating in rubbish and smog, where there’s no parking or normal traffic, the local government from DUI cared more for the wages of the people who’d bring them votes, so they bought the loyalty to the party with 900.000 Euros for wages from the municipal budget. And the central government transferred money to Tetovo to reduce debts. And the ones doing all of that aren’t the commanders from DUI. The ones doing this are people from the intellectual wing, educated people like Teuta Arifi, who had ambitions to become ambassador to Washington. And if she doesn’t, the coalition may fall apart. And she has the nerve to tell Kasami to deal less with her, and more with Tetovo. Why didn’t she deal with Tetovo while she was mayor?
Kasami is now asking the ones who didn’t do their job to give the money back. Very enthusiastic. They can’t fire the full-time employees who don’t show up to work, let alone make part-time employees give the money back, since they don’t even live here.
3 This year, Macedonia was upgraded from a country with “hybrid regime” to a “flawed democracy” on the Economist Democracy Index. Based on the five criteria to which ranking is done, in four categories it has a score above the average of 6.03, and only in the category “political culture” the score is very low – 3.13.
What kind of political culture are we talking about when, for instance, the leader of VMRO-DPMNE Hristijan Mickoski needs only one Facebook post and just a single sentence to insult three people? As was the case after the signing of the minimum salary agreement, and after SDSM didn’t accept the proposal for the Assembly to submit a declaration on Goce Delchev , Mickoski wrote “this shame, as is expected from the matrix of Kovachevski’s true owner, and that is Zoran Zaev, in a spectacular fashion, an agreement on minimum salary was reached with the lackey from the trade union”.
It’s one thing to disagree with someone, it’s another to be rude. They have other people in their party who are outspoken about their disapproval, but they’re not disrespectful. There’s Timcho Mucunski, Gordana Siljanovska, Sasho Klekovski…who are VMRO members and are well-spoken. In contrast to – you’re an idiot, a criminal, a mobster, a drug addict, a pawn, a lackey, stupid and – we should hang you on the square.
The leader should take the first step. We’re not talking about anonymous party bots. We’re talking about insults on social networks. We’re talking about the leader of the largest opposition party. Mickoski made unrefined language – the norm. And that spills over into announcements by the party, press conferences, statements by spokespersons. How can they live with so much hatred and anger? And Dimitar Apasiev from Levica just upgraded what Mickoski normally does. The idea that being rude is nothing to be ashamed of. Because that coarse language does the trick. And the most tragic thing is that both of them are university professors.
It’s not like SDSM’s manners are much better based on what we can see in their announcements, although in public appearances their officials hold themselves well. I just hope they won’t follow the crude populism of Mickoski and Apasiev, as they’ve started to follow Gruevski’s crude PR to brag about the success of the Government. Like now, when the government promotes the increase of the minimum salary with a returnee from Germany who says that 18,000 are enough for a good life.
4 After four years and in the third retrial of the SPO case “Titanic”, several high officials of the then VMRO-DPMNE leadership, such as Gordana Jankulovska, Martin Protugjer and Mile Janakieski pleaded guilty to participating in electoral fraud and apologized to those who felt offended by what they heard in the wiretapped conversations.
Mickoski is free to be toxic as much as he wants during his political appearances. However, he has no right to blame others of crime and mafia rule until he apologizes for the criminal and mafia wrongdoings of his party. All the toxicity he brings into public space with his daily political statements won’t hide the fact that his party rigged elections and robbed the country. And their leader fled to Budapest to save himself from a trial for the robbery.
5 Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski reported to Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov about the case of the broken windowpane of a booth for candles and flowers in the Bitola cemetery, owned by the secretary of the Bulgarian association “Vancho Mihajlov”. His ex-wife broke the little windowpane, he called the Bulgarian consulate to complain and there you go the bad separation of the spouses turn into an international dispute.
Fortunately, Kovachevski explained the marital drama to Petkov, otherwise we’d have yet another obstacle to start the EU accession talks. When Petkov asked what we’re planning to do about the little windowpane of the Bulgarian from Bitola, Kovachevski could have used the opportunity to ask him: What’s Bulgaria, an EU member state, planning to do with the 16 rulings of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on the rights of the Macedonian minority to resister their associations? Or that’s not to be asked, since Petkov said that he doesn’t even want to discuss the topic of the Macedonian minority in Bulgaria. Whereas we accept discussions on anything and everything, even about who was the one who broke the little window pane in the Bitola cemetery.
I really don’t know how far we’ll go with stripping ourselves of any dignity in the dispute with Bulgaria. When the two prime ministers talked to each other, maybe after Kovachevski had finished justifying himself to Petkov – we took action and found out who broke the little windowpane – he mustered the courage to ask him: And what are you going to do about the violation of human rights in your EU member state?
What a sensitive time for our path to the EU, you can’t even frown at someone who feels like a Bulgarian. They immediately file a complaint at the consulate. And Petkov immediately phones Kovachevski.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
