1 Even before I started letting my children walk to school on their own, I repeated the same instructions to them a hundred times every time we went out: you’ll cross the street only at a pedestrian crossing and you’ll wait for the green light on the traffic light to show. However, in our country, even the green light isn’t green. Just as the pedestrian crossing isn’t a pedestrian crossing, the pavement isn’t a pavement, the right lane on the boulevards isn’t a street but a parking lot, and the cameras aren’t actually cameras, because they don’t record, and even if they do, the footage gets erased.
I fear that the murder of the 22-year-old girl, run over while crossing a pedestrian crossing on one of the busiest boulevards in Skopje, will be forgotten, just like a dozen similar tragedies before it. What will follow is a familiar cycle of blame being shifted from one institution to another, along with a series of excuses, until the wildly defiant 20-year-old who ran her over is released from prison, at which point we’ll just pray he doesn’t kill us too.
The murderer was driving without a licence, speeding at over 120 kilometres per hour in the middle of the city, ran a red light, was drunk, had hit another woman with his car at the age of 16, had been convicted of drug trafficking, yet had never served time in prison. They must have released him because “they felt sorry for the kid, felt sorry for his parents.” Should we not feel sorry for the girl that was killed at a pedestrian crossing? Should we not feel sorry for her parents?
The mindset of the unscrupulous doesn’t recognise the pain of others. And we live in a country where the unscrupulous reign supreme. Not just on the streets, but throughout the system. And they beat us down every single day. Since they threaten our safety even at pedestrian crossings and remain unpunished, what can we expect in the future when it comes to finding justice in court, at work, or in areas like education, healthcare, urban planning, clean air, and water…
All hopes for justice collapsed when Parliament legalised impunity for political officials.
What moral values could the 20-year-old boy possibly have, when every mistake he made went unpunished? That’s how he ended up as a murderer, released back onto the streets like a ticking time bomb.
Impunity is encouraged. How many police officers-bodyguards of politicians have killed people in traffic accidents and never been convicted? This murder too is the result of a series of corrupt verdicts that hasten the moral decline of our society.
Does corruption kill? Yes, we’ve just seen that it does.
2 Our country has already lost its moral compass, so why not just abolish both Ethics and Logic in high schools and bury the last hope that schools will teach children how to become responsible citizens.
The reform of secondary education is still in the public debate phase, but given how much the party limits the thinking capacity of its MPs, I wouldn’t be surprised if this proposal gets passed.
The Minister of Education, Professor Vesna Janevska, claims that “abolishing the subjects Ethics and Logic will not hinder children from developing critical thinking, because critical thinking is mostly cultivated through mathematics, chemistry and other natural sciences, where there’s a thought process involved, not through learning subjects like philosophy, sociology, ethics, logic, and other socials sciences.”
So, with mathematics, physics, and chemistry, children will learn how to make a nuclear bomb, but they won’t know whether it’s ethical to use it.
Makes perfect sense, right?
3 At the commemorative ceremony at the Macedonian National Theatre for the Serbian holiday of Saint Sava, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski and SDSM President Venko Filipche were sitting in the first row of the audience, while the President of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, used his speech to assert that the massacre of the Muslim population in Srebrenica wasn’t genocide, that NATO was a criminal organisation, and that Putin had to attack Ukraine to protect the Russian people.
I remember the international scandal caused by the Greek ambassador, who stood up and left Parliament at the exact moment when the new President, Gordana Siljanovska – Davkova, failed to mention “North” in her inauguration oath. Unlike her, our Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition listened to the guest destabilising their country, applauded him, and stayed until the end to listen to Deputy Prime Minister Ivan Stoilković praise Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic as the bringer of peace and stability to the region.
The next day, at a press conference, Prime Minister Mickoski responded to a journalist’s question, saying that he didn’t expect Dodik to abuse the event to send such political messages.
And what can you expect from Dodik, who’s been placed on several U.S. blacklists on several grounds, from undermining the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina to corruption?
Two days after the ceremony, Venko Filipche stated that Dodik’s messages were dangerous and concerning, and questioned whether the security services knew who was coming and what he would say. The opposition leader reacted after Mickoski said he was surprised. It took him two days to wake up. He was startled by his own applause.
4 When asked by a journalist how the state would attract IT experts to work in the public sector, Prime Minister Mickoski responded, “There are still patriots who want to work for the state, even if their salary is lower than in the private sector.”
So, patriots – IT specialists are willing to work for little pay. Unlike the party patriots, who have new job positions created for them at high salaries. With our money.
Some give their all for their country. Others take all they can from it.
5 How are things progressing with the killed bear from the photo shoot of the deputy director of PE “Macedonia Road?” Are they still dissecting it to determine whether it was shot or hit by a car? Perhaps they’re waiting for an exhumation for pathological forensic analysis? Or maybe they’re keeping it in some fridge for sausages?
We’re probably the first country in the world where the government is trying to cover up the killing of a bear.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski