1 After the disastrous result of SDSM in the first round of the presidential elections, where the difference between Gordana Siljanovska – Davkova and Stevo Pendarovski is 180,000 votes, it’d be best for SDSM to stop talking about the European Union for the next ten days until the second round and the parliamentary elections. Since nothing good will come out of just talking about it. They should have got down to work…
Whatever they say about the EU is pointless and it doesn’t contribute to the European idea. Not even Dimitar Kovachevski’s warnings that if VMRO-DPMNE wins, the European perspective will be threatened. The fact they mention the EU a hundred times a day doesn’t make them more European than those who didn’t vote for them in the elections.
The European perspective offered by SDSM can’t be reduced solely to the inclusion of Bulgarians in our Constitution. Who was stopping them from implementing European governance practices and working, even without starting the EU accession talks? How many things could they have done without the support of the EU? How many things they shouldn’t have done, even without starting the EU accession talks? They do know how the EU operates. They’ve been places. They pose for photos in Brussels every day.
However, they chose the path of least resistance. We’ll promise foreigners that we’ll amend our Constitution and we’ll solve all our problems. The EU will get things done for us. The USA will not allow VMRO-DPMNE to return to power. Meanwhile, we’ll sit all day in bars owned by friends, which encroach on public space with illegal outdoor areas designed for smoking, we’ll complain about the stupid citizens who don’t understand geopolitics, we’ll accuse our political rivals of being pro-Russian and anti-European, and we’ll scare all those who criticise us that VMRO will come back.
Turns out, it wasn’t that simple after all.
2 Macedonians might have forgiven the government for accepting the infamous French proposal without being sure that it could implement it, if it had practiced European values and a European way of working domestically. It would have been a bitter pill to swallow, but had they been successful in governing justly we might have accepted another amendment to the Constitution. You could say that even if they had failed to deal with corruption completely, we would have been more understanding. Of course, if they themselves weren’t corrupt. The only thing they needed to do is to abide by the laws, especially because most of them are already in line with European legislation. If there was just a little bit more order in state institutions and if impunity or selective justice weren’t so prevalent, the question of whether one or another ethnic group of 3-4,000 people would be mentioned in the Preamble of the Constitution would be insignificant.
But let’s not forget who we’re talking about. They increased their salaries by 70 percent less than a year before the elections. They granted pardons to criminals. They made sure they would be pardoned as well, if they were caught stealing. All of this was done in the name of the EU by passing laws in the Parliament fast-tracked with the use of the European flag. In the meantime, court processes for high corruption and crime falter, the sale of state land doesn’t stop, not only have they failed to fix the urban chaos but they’re making it even worse, they’re rigging tenders, they’re hiring people based on party merit…
So, what do we do now? Apparently, the real problem is the European perspective. Not even Bojan Marichic’s poetry helps: “Macedonia’s heart is red and it beats with a social-democratic fighting spirit, and that European soul will lead us to victory”.
Alas, my red soul. They’ve worn out the European idea and values with the nonsense they repeat, apparently in the name of the EU.
And – “we got the message, we don’t give up on the future.” It’s not like anyone can give up on the future. The future will inevitably arrive. With or without you. The only question is whether it will be good or bad, and there’s potential for intervention there.
They’re offering us a European future, without doing anything for the European present.
3 That’s why Hristijan Mickoski should stop bragging that “the tsunami has risen and will completely crash over them on the 8th of May.” At least in the first round of the presidential elections, VMRO-DPMNE received more or less the usual number of votes. VMRO-DPMNE shouldn’t be credited as much for the election results as SDSM should. It’s not a tsunami. However, it’s true that SDSM was swept away because until now it had never won fewer than 200,000 votes. Yet, that flood wasn’t caused by the tsunami of VMRO-DPMNE, but rather by votes for SDSM leaking away. It’s leaking from all sides.
The evening after the first round of the presidential elections, Mickoski thanked those who voted for Siiljanovska – Davkova, urged those who didn’t vote for anyone to vote, but also addressed “those who cast their vote for the government, I want you to know that there won’t revenge against anyone.”
I want to believe that the word “revenge” coming from the leader of VMRO-DPMNE was a Freudian slip, emerging from his subconscious, from the 11-year dark era of VMRO’s rule, when the Ministry of Internal Affairs was misused to find out who people voted for, or there would be “screaming and crying.”
What a comforting thought for those who voted or Stevo Pendarovski and for those who’ll vote for the government on the 8th of May.
4Finally – as the cherry on top, Ali Ahmeti appeared at the central rally of the European Front of DUI to support their presidential candidate Bujar Osmani, and started shouting “NLA, NLA,” from the podium, with thousands of men in the crowd chanting, without a single flag of our state, waving only Albanian flags and the American flag here and there. What a solemn celebration of the bright European perspective.
Indeed, there’s no giving up on the future.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
