1 I’ve been watching both the Government and the opposition posing for photos at the Kumanovo-Beljakovce railway line, which was under construction for 28 years, along with other roads, all while tossing around percentages to claim credit for their construction. The guys from SDSM just figured out that showing up on TV every day is a good move. The same trick VMRO-DPMNE used to pull. They only have themselves to blame for not rolling up their sleeves and finishing the projects when they were in power. I’ve always wondered why, for instance, there are no workers around after four in the afternoon during the summer, when the day is still long? And there’s always been an excuse: You know, that’s just not how things are done.
Well, that’s not how things are done, but it turns out that even in opposition, the guys from VMRO were disciplined and planned out a list of everything they’d release, projects SDSM and DUI failed to complete.
I couldn’t care less about who takes the credit for completing it. What really matters is for us to be able to drive on those roads. We don’t need to know how many percent of something someone built, how much someone started building, and who finished building it. What matters to us is how much it all cost and how many percent someone stole, if any. If no one stole anything, let the conversation end there. There’s no need for us to congratulate them for doing what we elected and paid them to do.
2 Another classic evasion of Macedonian democracy that will be studied in law textbooks. As an epic evasion of logic and reason. And it was said by none other than the President of the Assembly, Afrim Gashi. He claimed that “the interpellation, by its nature, carries no legal consequences or effects.”
The Assembly voted on the interpellations of Afrim Gashi and several ministers, but the interpellations didn’t pass. However, the interpellation of the President of the Social Policy Committee, Ilire Dauti, was passed by a majority vote. This automatically meant her replacement, not an expectation for her to resign. Meanwhile, Gashi is explaining to us that the majority vote for her removal “has no legal consequences.”
If the interpellation has no legal consequences, then why bother with a vote in the first place? The MPs could have just debated, met the daily democracy quota, clocked out and collected their daily allowance. By the way, they didn’t debate in a pub, eating and drinking, but in the Assembly. The very place where laws are passed. How can something voted on in the Assembly have no legal consequences? The MPs can change the Constitution, they changed the name of our country, they changed our flag, but they can’t change the president of a commission. Even though they voted to change her.
According to Gashi’s logic, even the laws passed in the Assembly have no legal consequences. Just like he doesn’t face any legal consequences for crossing the border into Kosovo without showing his passport, along with all the wedding guests behind him. Or when he calls on his personal police security to use their guns to help the Kosovo President avoid having her hand luggage scanned at the airport.
Or perhaps legal consequences don’t apply when it comes to officials from Albanian parties. They immediately play their ethnic card.
3 VMRO-DPMNE holds press conferences every day, claiming that Artan Grubi committed crimes worth millions, and that SDSM stayed silent about it to cling to power for just one more day. Literally, every single day.
VMRO-DPMNE MPs voted for the interpellation of MP Dauti. But later, when their coalition partner, Afrim Gashi, started interpreting that what had been passed had no legal effect, they stayed silent.
SDSM stayed silent about Grubi’s crimes. VMRO-DPMNE stays silent about Gashi’s evasive nonsense. You don’t just break apart a coalition for democracy like that.
4 The new EU Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, has proposed a football match between a team of candidate countries and EU member states. At a committee hearing in the European Parliament, she said, “We have to bring the soft power of enlargement into the core of the process, which consists of chapters, benchmark and clusters.”
If our situation has come down to playing football, then we’ll play football if necessary. We had no problem dancing folk dances in front of embassies for visas, so you can bet we’ll play football.
But what would that match look like? And where would it be played to ensure neutral ground? Elon Musk would be the referee, with Trump, Putin, and Xi Jinping as the delegates. And if we win, what happens then? Will they finally admit us? Since, of course, joining the EU is based on merit. Yeah, right.
Of course not. We’ll end up negotiating every goal. And we’ll wait for the 27 member states to reach a consensus on whether the goal actually counts.
Imagine if Hristijan Mickoski scored a goal. It’d be tough to put up with that. He wouldn’t get off TV, going on and on about it, giving a detailed analysis from every possible angle of the goal he scored. We’d have to survive that historic success of Macedonian robust diplomacy.
But then again, I’m afraid that even if he did score, Bulgarians would disallow Mickoski’s goal. They’d say “that goal ain’t a goal” and hit us with yet another veto.
We’ve been a candidate country for EU membership since December 2005. One of these days, we’ll celebrate the 20th anniversary of being successfully dribbled.
5 A burek shop in Bitola offered its costumers the chance to rig the coin in the maznik traditionally spun for the religious holiday of Vasilica. It’s believed that whoever finds the coin will be lucky, but modern trends have changed the custom, so in some places, the person who gets the coin also gets money from others.
Bitola is notorious for pyramid schemes. So, after the failed savings banks “TAT” and “Lavci” from the end of the last and the beginning of this century, we now have a pyramid maznik. The folk song says that “money doesn’t buy happiness,” but it wouldn’t hurt to have both the happiness brought by the coin in the bread, and money in your pocket.
This isn’t a serious crime. We’re not talking about morality this time. But at its core, it shows that our people see nothing wrong in cheating, even when it involves something as trivial as spinning a maznik for a religious event. So, it’s no surprise that for thirty years, our state and our people haven’t been robbed only by those who didn’t try to rob them.
After all, we’re the ones to blame. A country mirrors its people.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
Translator’s Note:
Maznik is a traditional Balkan pastry, often served during holidays like Vasilica, with various fillings and sometimes containing a hidden coin for luck.
