1 Twenty-four elementary students and 26 high school students from Shtip didn’t show up at school in the second semester. They moved abroad with their parents.

It’s not that the parents didn’t want to work or the students didn’t want to study. They moved abroad precisely for that reason, for the parents to work, for the children to study. They moved abroad because they didn’t feel like waiting for Dimitar Kovachevski to win, then win a second term, and finally bring Macedonia into the EU along with Ali Ahmeti. Nor do they have the patience to wait for Hristijan Mickoski to tell them how he intends to bring Macedonia into the EU after they first vote for him and wins the elections. They no longer want to listen to empty promises, neither from domestic politicians, nor from the EU.

Since our independence, no government has managed to put an end to corruption, to stop the practice of buying vote brigades by overhiring employees in the public administration, to respect competent and freethinking individuals instead of loyal lackeys, to provide non-selective punishment, to bring order to the state institutions and the municipalities, to ensure laws are respected, to make sure there is good governance, accountability, responsibility…

These 50 children from Shtip have already grasped their European future during the winter break. These children are just from Shtip. No one has counted the children from other places. Do you know how much they care about Kovachevski, Mickoski and Ahmeti? They’ll start a new life there, they’ll study, they’ll work, they’ll make a new home, they’ll create families and might come back to get a jar of ajvar, of course, provided someone who knows how to make it stays in the country.

And parties should stop blaming each other for failing to bring European order back home, when there are plenty of things they could actually do without the EU. Even if they weren’t competent to implement them, they would’ve learned by now, but they simply don’t want to.

I don’t want to hear promises about the EU anymore. I don’t want the EU – who knows when. I don’t know EU just around the corner. I don’t want EU on hold. And I don’t want anyone to bring us into the EU, considering the fact I already live in Europe. I want the EU at home. And I want the EU – now.

2 Although they couldn’t bring the EU home, SDSM and DUI will keep organising policy presentations, telling us that we should join the EU. They’re convinced that they’ll win the elections with speeches at European conferences. The way they’ve started presenting all failures as successes, they’ll eventually try to convince us that the Bulgarian veto is also a success.

Prime Minister Kovachevski says that “for the first time, the veto on the European integration of North Macedonia comes from within” and he’s convinced that after the elections there’ll be a coalition that will consists of 80 MPs in favour of including Bulgarians in our Constitution.

So, our EU accession is becoming an issue of the parties. So, our EU accession is no longer an issue of the state, but a party interest in who’ll start the negotiations. However, what needs to be done to make Macedonia a country fitting for the EU is not a party interest.

The veto is not from within. The veto belongs to the EU, led by Bulgaria. We have a specific hostile move from a neighbouring country that doesn’t recognise the Macedonian identity. We have a specific veto imposed from a position of strength. But, so far, the government hasn’t accepted a discussion about how to address said veto. With the French proposal the government accepted a condition without having a plan on how meet it. And now they blame all those who told them their plan couldn’t be enforced and all those who don’t want the constitutional amendments to be passed.

If it were that easy to secure 80 votes in the Parliament, why haven’t they secured them so far?

We got to this point by waiting for the EU and the USA to solve our problem. Since, “that’s what the foreigners say.” “You tell us how, and we’ll accept it.” You must be very naïve if you think someone else will solve your problem in your favour. Maybe things will turn out well for you a couple of times, but of course, they’ll always solve it in a way that’s easiest for them.

Well, that’s what you get when you take forming alliances as a need to be submissive.

After all, even the Bulgarian veto would’ve hurt less if this were a normal country. The sense of hopelessness comes from the fact that our country is no good, not because the EU says it loves us very much, but not as much as to bend Bulgaria’s hand. The country that doesn’t respect 14 rulings of the Court of Human Rights related to the rights of Macedonians in an EU member state.

3 In fact, I’m convinced that the USA wants to see Macedonia in the EU much more than the EU wants that.

Assistant Secretary of State James O’Brien said that one party is proposing a way forward to the EU, and the other is promising to come up with a way to move the country forward, so it’s up to the citizens to choose between what they know and what’s only a promise.

In the big picture, America has its own plans and programmes, and we’re lucky that our interests align when it comes to the stability and safety in this part of Europe.  America is trying to solve its own problem and believes that in order to ensure that stability it’s best for the entire region to become part of the EU.

However, neither SDSM, nor VMRO-DPMNE, nor DUI participate in the elections in Wyoming and Iowa. And neither O’Brien, nor Ambassador Angela Aggeler, is registered in our State Election Commission on the Macedonian list of voters.

And one more thing on this topic since the American diplomat mentioned promises. The EU too promised that once we change our name we’d start the negotiations and tricked us. Whereas now, it doesn’t even promise us anything if we include Bulgarians in our Constitution.

The USA and the EU are minding their own business. The questions is why our government has accepted to solve the EU’s problem and not the problem of our citizens?

4 The press conferences and announcements of VMRO-DPMNE ,in which they repeat every single day that “it has never been worse,” are hilarious.

It’s not super good, but stop blabbering that “it’s never been worse.” It’s not worse even for the VMRO members installed in various state institutions, public enterprises, municipal utility services… They settled down a little “like a bear in a cave” and they’ve started seeing themselves as the winners, they’re getting carried away, they’re even threatening about what they’d do to the different-minded.

Macedonia suffers from short memory, but still, it’s not like we’re brain-dead. We still remember Nikola Gruevski’s escape to Budapest. We should be sorry for him too, because apparently it’s never been worse.

“It’s never been worse,” says the party that organised the attack on the Parliament on 27 April, 2017. The party that forcibly threw out opposition MPs and journalists from the Parliament during the budget vote on 24 December, 2012.

“It’s never been worse” than the war in 2001, than Kumanovo’s Divo Naselje, than “there’ll be screaming and crying,” than “how about we start a war,” than “in a ditch, along with his family, along with his children,” than “incapable of hiding just one murder,” “I’ll slam you on the front page, “a couple of slaps is not a crime,” than giving an entire country under concession for mines, than the billions stolen and poured into various Belize-type countries…

As if we don’t know who and what we are, that the people from the White Palace built with stolen money should tell us that “it’s never been worse.”

It’s worse that Hristijan Mickoski never apologised for the crimes and the pillaging of the country his party did. Which means that he doesn’t even think what they did was that bad. And that means they they’ll continue doing it if they come to power.

And the worst thing is that considering all the current options, there’s not really any good news for the citizens.

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski