1 For four years they fought against the illegal urban plans that VMRO-DPMNE used to carry out at four o’clock in the morning and – they gave up. SDSM shot themselves in the foot again three months before the local elections. The Mayor of Centar Municipality Sasa Bogdanovic signed the building permit of one of the three twenty-storey buildings at “Holiday Inn”. Now, let them call the investor, the Macedonian Orthodox Church, to ensure their victory in October. And let the future tenants of the buildings vote for them.
What promises will they make in the electoral campaign? What will they offer? Residential buildings? A congested city center? We’ve successfully consumed Vodno, we’ve used up all the space in Debar Maalo and Kisela Voda, any time now we’ll deprive Karposh of its air, and then we set our sights on Rasadnik. We’ll have a metropolis of displeased residents and pleased investors.
In the “Holiday Inn” case, VMRO-DPMNE changed their plans, and SDSM consolidated their parcels. So, there’s no escaping that. Today it’s “Holiday Inn,” but tomorrow it will be Rasadnik. The location isn’t the problem. The problem is the principle. If the government allow the construction according to a plan which isn’t in line with the General urban plan, tomorrow they’ll pass laws which aren’t in line with the Constitution. Why? Because that’s what the investor wanted.
The most outrageous thing is that the government is playing off the whole thing as development. Yes, sure. Of course, it’s development. It’s development of the business plans of the investors, not development of the city and the quality of life. And they even take you for an idiot – they say to you – you’re just envious, the buildings will look really good. Well, imagine if they didn’t! Plus, it’s deeply offensive that they’re selling us on the uncontrolled construction as development just because it brings profit to the investors, money for utilities to the municipalities so they’d be able to pay the army of party members in the administration, as to all of us who have decided to live here it brings an overheated and polluted city, without greenery and light, no access for fire trucks and ambulances, jam-packed with cars.
We don’t vote for the investor in the elections. We don’t expect him to protect the public interest. He doesn’t give a damn if there’ll be enough schools, kindergartens, hospitals, parking lots, easily-accessible streets, parks… Seriously, he doesn’t give a damn at all. He’ll sell his apartments, he’ll take his money and he’ll move to a new location. He’ll use that money to send his children and grandchildren abroad, so they wouldn’t bother struggling here in inhumane living conditions. And the problems will remain and will pile up from one cycle of elections to another. Because, the government doesn’t protect even those who will buy the new apartments, let alone those who are already living there. The investor is doing what’s in his best interest. The problem is that the government is not doing what’s in our best interest.
2 Similarly to when the state says that in the battle against the pandemic the private interest of anti-vaxxers cannot endanger public health, the private interest of investors and parcel owners cannot endanger the common good. Yes, private property in capitalism is sacred, but the story that private interest is above public interest dates back four centuries. In fact, that’s what the state is for. To set the rules of the game, to ensure the standards for the common good and to protect them from being endangered.
We had a guy who understood the development of Skopje that way – that the private interest is above the public one, so he ended up fleeing in a trunk to Budapest and left all those who were carrying out his “development” in Shutka.
3 The example of Centar Municipality showed that even when there is a mayor who wants to change something, once an order comes from the party, everything that was promised goes up in smoke. So, instead of serving the needs of residents, they serve the needs of the party firms and businesses. On top of that, there are corrupt officials who sabotage from within all efforts to revise bad urban plans.
That’s the way things stand because the mayors and councilors in the municipalities don’t work for the interest of the citizens, but work so the higher-ups would like them better and let them run for office again. And they’ll spend the last four or five months of their term planting flowers and shrubs, hoping that those who voted for them will get amnesia and won’t remember how deceived and betrayed they were.
4 They really overdid the whole deal with the successes of the government. After the promotion of a donation from Switzerland for fire engines in Berovo, Deputy Prime Minister Ljupco Nikolovski wrote on his Facebook profile: “The government is continuously investing in improving the living conditions in every municipality, in every segment that is important for the daily life of citizens.”
Who’s investing? Well, Switzerland is investing. What’s the Government’s contribution? That they’ve allowed Switzerland to give us four vehicles, equipment for our firefighters and to train them in fighting wildfires? It really is a governmental success. A success of the Swiss Government.
The same day it was also announced that the German Government bought a drying and ironing machine for a kindergarten in Pehchevo.
The foreigners are making an inventory of what our citizens need, and our guys have already made an inventory of the official vehicles that need to be replaced with new ones. For example, the Health Insurance Fund bought two cars for 80,000 euros, while the German Embassy donated a freezer for bone transplants for 6,500 euros. Maybe if the Health Insurance Fund had bought one car fewer, they’d be left with enough money for a freezer?
The embassies are on a roll. While our government and the local authorities are making a list of locations to consolidate and a wish list for the party investors, the foreign ambassadors are making lists of our citizens’ needs. While the Macedonian Orthodox Church is building residential buildings for its own profit, the US and the EU are renovating our churches, which are a cultural treasure. The foreigners went for a stroll through Macedonia and detected what the municipalities needed exactly – fire engines, medical freezers, ambulances, therapy pools, water supply, garbage cans, classrooms for autistic children, aids for the blind… The only mistake of the embassies is that they didn’t detect that we also lack passports and ID cards and license plates and report cards, so they could start giving us those too. Let’s not waste time in the moving abroad process.
5 There aren’t any spare parts for the Chinese buses Gruevski bought for Skopje, the Ukrainian ones are falling apart and the city government definitely has to buy new vehicles for public transport. And because it’s stupid to promise a tram in these elections as well, as it’s been promised for thirty years, we’ll now have a “metro above the ground”. Or “tram on wheels”. Or, it’s even cooler to call it “bus rapid transit”. Since it’s too simple to call it “fast bus transport”.
Because, at the end of the day, what Mayor Petre Shilegov is promoting is just that – fast bus transport. There’s one thing though – in normal countries and in normal cities, even here, in the European hell-hole of the Western Balkans, fast bus transport is marked with a yellow line on the far right lane, and the central greenery on the boulevards is not destroyed. Why? Because in our country, the far right lane is occupied by dudes having a cup of coffee while looking at their cars and police officers who don’t fine the show-offs and park their cars on the street to make a quick stop at the betting shop.
That’s how things are done here. Instead of clearing away the dudes troubling the state, the state will clear away the greenery that troubles the dudes.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
