1 Did you catch how U.S. Ambassador Angela Aggeler put it, after the U.S. Department designated formed Deputy Prime Minister Artan Grubi and Appellate Court Judge Enver Bexheti for their involvement in significant corruption? If we can gather the evidence, I’m confident that the Macedonian authorities can do the same.
They can. But they don’t want to. Every time a new name of a Macedonian citizen appears on the American blacklist, the same debate resurfaces, sparking additional frustration all over again. Simply because we’re talking about suspected crimes recorded by a foreign state. Whereas our state refuses to acknowledge them. We too have a police force, financial police, financial counterintelligence, prosecutors and judges… We also receive tips about suspected crimes. Judge Bexheti made headlines in our media for repeatedly stalling the trials against Sasho Mijalkov, yet our tips seem insignificant. It was only when those tips reached Washington that the Prosecutor’s Office decided to take action. And the Association of Judges responded by saying that “placing any judge on the U.S. blacklist is a serious blow to the honour and reputation of the specific judicial official.”
When we wrote about all the shenanigans in the Judicial Council aimed at protecting precisely the “specific” Bexheti, judges didn’t give a damn about their honour and reputation. At that time, the Prosecutor’s Office turned a deaf ear to “the tip.” They didn’t catch the ones accepting the bribes, but now they’re bragging that they would catch even the ones offering them.
Forget about reputation, the thing that matters the most is not to anger those who’ve ticked your name in the party notebook. So, the fuss over this addition to the American blacklist will soon die down. Artan Grubi, outside of DUI, is now an ordinary citizen. What does he have to lose? He won’t be able to go on holiday in America. And Judge Bexheti won’t be attending training sessions in the U.S. anymore.
Ambassador Aggeler said that the USA has spent half a billion on training for the judiciary and that 85 percent of Macedonian judges and prosecutors have been sent to the USA for training at least once. Their investment paid off. Double fail. For both them and for us. In America, maybe they trained in shopping malls. And back home, they became experts at efficiently stalling court cases until the statute of limitations expires.
2 In his resignation letter from politics, Artan Grubi wrote that everything he did, he did with the strategic partners from the USA. The problem isn’t what he did with their knowledge, but what he did without it. He probably counted on their support by posing for photos with American flags. I think it’s likely the Americans had gathered evidence on him even when he was deputy prime minister. First Deputy Prime Minister, to be more precise. Now that he’s not in power, it’s his turn to join the other prominent names from the Macedonian political and business elite.
The protection that Grubi abused, believing the Americans were on his side, fell apart when he fell from power. Honestly, I’d like to believe that by blacklisting a high-ranking DUI official, and particularly one as influential as Grubi, the American administration is sending a message that the Albanian political leaders in Macedonia shouldn’t count on unwavering support, no matter how relentlessly they wave American flags.
Ambassador Aggeler stated that the blacklisting of Grubi and Bexheti by the State Department is proof that political influence in the judiciary cannot and will not be tolerated. So – hands off the judiciary. However, the judiciary also includes the Constitutional Court, where DUI has started protests yet again, threatening war if the law on languages is discussed. In which other country does the Constitutional Court not review the constitutionality of laws? It’s absurd to claim that the Constitutional Court mustn’t decide on issues affecting Albanians from a mono-ethnic perspective. Are the people sitting there constitutional judges, or are they Macedonians and Albanians? What do they discuss? Whether something is constitutional or unconstitutional, or do they actually discuss their personal feelings, who’s a great Macedonian and who’s a great Albanian? As if it’s not enough that we have separate universities, schools, and kindergartens, now we’re expected to have separate courts for Albanians. What’s next? Separate hospitals?
In that’s the case, how about we abolish the Constitutional Court and leave only Ali Ahmeti there in a tent, since he knows best what’s constitutional.
The moment DUI is not in power, they immediately threaten war, immediately take the boots out of the attic, sharpen the knives, clean the rifles… Although, to be fair, VMRO-DPMNE also thrives on these threats. From the first day Hristijan Mickoski became prime minister, he hasn’t stopped talking about destabilisation. We’re all too familiar with that situation. DUI makes threats. VMRO-DPMNE scares us with DUI’s threats and brags that it will defend us.
But, let’s not open old wounds, like those from the Divo Naselje days. They still haven’t healed. And they still hurt.
3 The Skopje Aqueduct, a 6th-century cultural monument of significant importance and a landmark of the capital, will be restored with 205,000 dollars grant from the U.S. Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Heritage. Minister of Culture and Tourism Zoran Ljutkov visited the aqueduct together alongside U.S. Ambassador Angela Aggeler.
However, in the photos we saw, there were piles of rubbish around the Aqueduct.
That’s who we are. Foreigners come to give you thousands of dollars to protect your historical and cultural heritage, and you welcome them with – rubbish. Not even a minister, in this case, the Minister of Culture and Tourism, is powerful enough to get the system moving, to at least clear the area when he accepts a gift from the tax payers of another country.
Maybe the Swedish ambassador and the embassy team should have gone there first to personally collect the rubbish around the monument, as they used to do, and then the minister could have joined them with the American ambassador to accept the 205,000 dollars.
And what does the American ambassador think to herself when sees the rubbish around the monument?
Dear God, our money is going down the drain. Just like the money for the training of judges and prosecutors. These people can’t even clean up their rubbish on their own. Both literally and figuratively.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
