1I was completely bewildered when Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski admitted from the parliamentary rostrum that his brother-in-law, who has businesses in Bulgaria, has held a Bulgarian passport since 2003, but said that was no sin because the money he earns there is spent here.
Hold on a second, I don’t quite understand the Government’s policy on EU accession. Where exactly are we heading?
So, apparently, if the roughly 3,000 citizens of Macedonia who declared themselves Bulgarian in the census are mentioned in the Constitution, it’s a case of “bending our backbone”. Yet the pinnacle of patriotism and the ultimate defence of our identity is to tell Macedonians and all other citizens, whether mentioned in the Constitution or not: if you want to join the EU, just get yourselves Bulgarian passports, but make sure you spend the money here.
In Parliament, responding to a question from MP Dimitar Apasiev, the Prime Minister stated: “I truly cannot grasp what the sin is, even if someone is a Bulgarian citizen, even if they do business in Bulgaria in levs, earning millions as you claim, and then bring that money to Macedonia to spend it here. I really cannot grasp what the sin is in people bringing the money they earn abroad back here, rather than taking it out of the country or, for instance, spending their summer holidays in expensive hotels on the Aegean coast or going shopping in Thessaloniki.”
In other countries that allow dual citizenship, no one asks you to declare that you aren’t Macedonian. In Bulgaria, however, if you wish to acquire Bulgarian citizenship, you must renounce your Macedonian identity. They don’t ask whether you need a Bulgarian passport to sell tights, work in a sandwich shop or drive a lorry… They don’t ask whether you’re a doctor, a student, a laid-off worker or a businessman. They ask whether you’re Bulgarian.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s certainly not a sin that the Prime Minister’s brother-in-law and his wife’s sister hold Bulgarian passports. They declared themselves Bulgarian, obtained citizenship and became EU citizens. Yet it’s a grave sin when the Prime Minister presents himself daily as the sole defender of the Macedonian essence, accusing others of betrayal, kneeling and bootlicking, and declares he won’t budge a single millimetre, even if it means waiting decades to join the EU, while at the same time seeing nothing wrong with a citizen taking a shortcut into the EU by obtaining a Bulgarian passport.
Or is it only when ministers, MPs or members of their families hold Bulgarian passports that it isn’t a sin? When money is involved, their otherwise unbending backbone suddenly becomes quite flexible.
To make matters worse, the Prime Minister even lectured those of us determined to join the EU with our Macedonian passports and identity this summer, suggesting we holiday at home if we didn’t want to be hassled at the Schengen borders. According to him, those who hold Macedonian passports and pay taxes here, yet choose to holiday or spend a weekend abroad, are traitors. Whereas those who hold Bulgarian passports and pay taxes in Bulgaria are patriots because they happen to spend their money here.
In short, the message the Prime Minister sent from the rostrum of the Macedonian Parliament is this: Macedonians who want to join the EU should simply declare themselves Bulgarian and obtain Bulgarian passports. As for me, I will keep Macedonia out of the EU. The citizens in the EU. Their state – no.
Or, as Bulgaria puts it – one people, two states.
2 Everything else is just an attempt to pull the wool over the public’s eyes.
Minister of Internal Affairs Panche Toshkovski said: “SDSM let criminals escape who, compared to Iva Mihajlova, are Brad Pitt.”
What’s next? Should we wait for George Clooney to escape too?
3 The fugitive Iva Mihajlova is charged with causing a fatal traffic accident. Her father, who has also fled to Bulgaria and is also a Bulgarian citizen, was sentenced here to 12 and a half years in prison for attempted murder, criminal conspiracy and violence.
How do we know that someone holding a Bulgarian passport won’t run us over at a pedestrian crossing tomorrow and then flee?
Minister of Foreign Affairs Timcho Mucunski sought the help of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in securing a meeting with Bulgarian Minister Velislava Petrova-Chamova.
If he had a Bulgarian passport and had killed someone, even Bulgarian President Iliana Iotova would receive him. And there’d be no need to pull strings in the EU.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
