1 If a political public opinion poll asking the question: “Who is the person you are most fond of”, shows that 7 percent of the respondents answered with Nikola Gruevski, then that’s the biggest proof of SDSM’s failure. Truth be told, Hristijan Mickoski’s failure as well. Those 7 percent are an incredibly low score for a political leader, but they’re still higher than the 5 percent score of Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski and the 6 percent of the VMRO-DPMNE leader, Hristijan Mickoski, in the poll conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI).
The percent is within statistical error. However, it’s a fact that six years after he was removed from power and four years after he fled the country, Gruevski’s name is still associated with a politician who’s worth being fond of – the man who kidnapped the state by robbing us, who wiretapped us, who shut down media outlets, who captured the judiciary, took possession of the police and the secret services, seized all the most profitable businesses by closing other people’s businesses, organized an armed attack on the Assembly and who, at the very end, fled hidden in a car boot with our money so he’d be able to thank us for our trust from Budapest.
Who’d even remember Gruevski now, who’d even give a damn about him, if SDSM in the last six years managed to provide a better quality of life? After six years without Gruevski, the government should be assessed on how much they’ve improved the quality of life, and not on how much Gruevski had ruined it. Not only have they failed to change the quality of life, not only have they failed to provide better education, more efficient public administration, less corruption, a functional state, humane living conditions in our municipalities, less political patronage, access to justice… No matter if they signed an agreement with Frontex or not. No matter if Kovachevski’s rating grew by 1.4 percent per month or not. No matter if they hid corruption behind the patriotism of “We have only one name”, or behind the Europeanism of “Insieme”. No matter if they’re stealing in the name of Macedonianness or in the name of EU integrations, it’s all the same.
It’s even worse. They’ve shattered our hope.
2 It’s not the same. Now we’re in NATO. We made a sacrifice in order to join NATO and changed the name of our country. Has the government done anything else apart from the fact that six years after Gruevski they’re still threatening that Gruevski might return?
The new sacrifice we’re asked to make is to change our Constitution yet again and include Bulgarians in the Preamble, although that’s no guarantee that Bulgaria will not abuse their EU membership to keep blocking us indefinitely. In fact, in the case of the Bulgarian veto we saw that promises don’t matter, and the fundamental values and principles the EU is founded on are being trampled by the EU members themselves, so we might never join the EU.
The General Secretary of SDSM, Mile Zechevikj – Vardarski, at last week’s party rally in “Boris Trajkovski” in Skopje said that “there will be no compromise for our future” and threatened: “We’ll run over anyone who gets in the way like a bulldozer”.
SDSM and VRMO-DPMNE are not the same. If nothing else, at least the freedom of speech and the freedom of thought are not stifled as was the case in Gruevski’s time, when they threatened people that they’d end up in a ditch. We can breathe a lot easier. But, freedom is a relative thing. The rhetoric at the rally in “Boris Trajkovski”, which was the reason half of Skopje was blocked, was terrifying and reminded us of the times we want to forget. SDSM’s lorry failed to run over the frog in 1998, so now they’re sending their political opponents a bulldozer.
3 President Stevo Pendarovski, in his annual address to the Assembly, said that “there will be no justice as long as judges and prosecutors who make scandalous decisions which hide corrupt motives are free”.
That’s not entirely true. Katica Janeva is not free, is she? The Special Prosecutor ended up in prison, and the most important people she prosecuted are either free or the statute of limitations on their cases will expire.
In future textbooks, for this period of the Euro-Atlantic history of Macedonia, children will learn that Macedonians changed the name of their country and included Bulgarians in the Constitution so that Sasho Mijalkov wouldn’t go to Idrizovo, and so his cousin Nikola Gruevski could analyse Freud and Kocho Racin’s work, while he’s still in Budapest, dreaming of how he’d ride a white horse and come back under Bucephalus’s balls on the dilapidated Macedonia square in Skopje.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
