1 If Angela Merkel was the first to fail, and now Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron don’t manage to lift Bulgaria’s veto on the start of Macedonia’s accession talks to join the European Union, then I really don’t know what we can expect from that union. It’s obvious that Bulgaria’s persistence to make Macedonians Bulgarian is already becoming a security problem for Europe and the USA, now that the American President has started issuing executive orders to protect US interests in the Western Balkans, and his administration has renewed the blacklists to punish the local overlords.

What does it mean to be held responsible by executive orders of a US president?

It means: Not complying with the agreements we’ve sponsored and grand corruption are against the US national interests. And now that we’ve been putting in time, energy and money for thirty years, we won’t let what we’ve invested in fail because of nationalists and corrupt politicians.

It means: In 1993 together with Great Britain we managed to admit you to the United Nations, after Europe gave up on you and said they’d never recognize you if you had the word Macedonia in your name. In 1995 we broke the Greek embargo by unloading American wheat for you in Thessaloniki. In 2004 we decided to call you by your constitutional name the Republic of Macedonia when everyone else called you FYROM, which you found offensive. In 2001 we saved you from a years-long civil war. In 2018 we reconciled you with Greece. In the end, we admitted you to NATO as North Macedonia, as Macedonians with a Macedonian language, because unlike the EU we keep our promises. You’ve become our strategic partners, you sit at the same table with us, your voice matters. And now, when we see that the EU is incapable of dealing with Bulgaria, and even if you start the accession talks who knows what else they’ll come up with to mess around with you, we’re afraid you’ll go looking for other friends and partners, so we decided to say “Enough is enough!”

And – so much of the analysis of US President Biden’s executive order.

2 Besides, by protecting the geostrategic interests Americans are trying to make a normal democratic society out of us. One with a responsible government and a responsible opposition. Since every government, no matter how good, goes off course without a strong opposition. In fact, they themselves saw Trump’s example and how terrible it is to have such drastic division in the society.

I am really interested in what the representatives of the opposition VMRO-DPMNE say in the American embassy when no one sees them? Do they say there as well that the Prespa Agreement is against the Macedonian national interests? Do they speak of Northerners, Nordistans, Tirana’s platforms, putting curses on traitors, annulling the Prespa Agreement through the Constitutional Court, imprisoning Nikola Dimitrov, drawing schemes to show the agreement was asymmetric, and that on the day they come back in power they’ll revise and restore the centuries-old name…?

And, how come they’re invoking the will of the citizens. We saw the will only of those who voted in the referendum. Hristijan Mickoski didn’t have the courage to call for a boycott, and hid behind anonymous twitter accounts instead. They don’t even know how many of us there are because they didn’t allow even the census to be conducted.

On the other hand, what has Mickoski offered these four years apart from whining, blocking the Assembly, blocking intersections, insults for the “northerners” and press-conferences about the “mafia in power?” Truth be told, there was a serious attack on the Assembly and several protests to free the attackers. You’d expect a normal European party that presents itself as part of the conservative right to occupy your attention with tax policies, debates on security and defense, and not to fly flags with the Vergina sun. I want the opposition to offer me solutions, not blockades. Mickoski keeps saying “I don’t want this, I don’t want that…,”and when you ask him “Tell us what you want,” he replies: “There’s no way I’m telling you, you northerner.” If Zaev decides to withdraw from politics tomorrow, Mickovski won’t have anything to say, because we haven’t seen anything he has to offer.

If he’d really wanted to become a real leader of VMRO-DPMNE, he would’ve had in four years. Not being able to restore the party in four years, means that that doesn’t matter to you at all. What matters to you is for your leader to come back from Budapest, the leader who ran out on you and left you confused to block streets in the rain. Plus, a true leader doesn’t hide behind the will of the citizens. A true leader tells the citizens what would be better for them. He looks beyond the boundaries of the electoral units.

After all, it’s completely legitimate for a political party to state in their program that they will revise the Prespa Agreement and restore the old constitutional name the Republic of Macedonia. And not to hide behind empty phrases that they will “respect the will of the citizens.” Yeah, right. They respect the will of the guy in Budapest.

3 That’s why, I find it unbelievable that SDSM are in a position to fear losing the elections. How inapt to rule do you have to be to get to such a low level that this VMRO-DPMNE could beat you? By doing nothing. By booing.

The mayor of Centar, Sasa Bogdanovic four months before the local elections, at the beginning of the campaign “The best for our municipality” went outside one morning and decided to cut down 13 trees. Where? In the middle of the municipality where they most hope to win and consider it a done deal. In the municipality where the park-defenders were born when Koce Trajanovski cut down 47 trees in one night. In the municipality where a new model was established, one in which civil society organizations were involved in the local government. The place where citizens are the loudest, where they ask him for analysis, where they oppose his urban plans, where they hang on his every word. The mayor went outside one morning and – set himself on fire.

Why do they make enemies out of the people whose votes helped them win? All those waving the flags of Vergina certainly won’t vote for SDSM. Neither will all those under Gruevski’s patronage who are hired in the public service positions, waiting for the annual leave allowance. SDSM’s win depends on the voters that Prime Minister Zaev calls grouches. On all those who count the trees, the potholes, who whine for two months that there aren’t any license plates, while Oliver Spasovski convinces them that there are, it depends on all those who don’t want to complicate their life to go all the way to Nish or Belgrade twice to get vaccinated and to waste their time waiting at the borders where the system for reading documents crashes, on all those who take photos of their garbage along the roads and the rubbish thrown on the mountains, on all those who seek fines for parking in pedestrian zones…

That’s the sort of moaners SDSM need. The ones who won’t applaud the government for every patched pothole in the road. The ones who will remind politicians that when they entered politics they should have been aware that they were there to provide citizens with better service and better living conditions. Not to provide a better life just for themselves.

4 In Biden’s order apart from the Ohrid Agreement and the Prespa Agreement it doesn’t say anywhere if the part about the corruption refers to the government or the opposition. So, if I were in the place of SDSM first I’d look at the domestic lists. On the black list that the US administration was ordered to upgrade and expand there is already someone who was Zaev’s advisor. And one coalition partner. Let Zaev comb through the names and the companies he puts on the lists for collaborators. And let him take one of those fine-tooth combs – the ones for getting rid of lice. Not one of those combs for hairstyling. Because the message from the strategic partner is that: If you don’t put them on your blacklist, then we’ll put them on ours.

5 In the end, DUI will emerge as the biggest winners again. They’re trying to save the day by doing what’s modern – they’re going green. They’ve returned to the original principles. To the forest. This time they’ll supposedly protect the forest, because with the illegal constructions, the illegal landfills and illegal logging they were testing whether the forest could support their idea of ecology and abandoning nationalism.

Ali Ahmeti is wise and keeps silent about Biden’s order. They’ve already had their own candidates who were high on that list. They leave room in case they get surprised, in case they see a new familiar name.

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski