1 SDK.MK has learned that Institution and System were detained tonight. They were brought in for questioning. Institution is suspected of Negligence in Office, while System is suspected of Aiding a Perpetrator of a Crime. Trust is also a suspect, but it’s inaccessible to law enforcement agencies because it’s on the run. All three suspects, Institution, System, and Trust, have formed a criminal association against the citizens.
This is what a police statement might look like, judging by the way citizens and especially officials understand the meaning of “institution” and “system”. Particularly when a tragedy that could have been avoided occurs. And particularly when the institution of the President of the State criticises the institutions for failing to do their job within the system, referring to the death of Ivana Jovanovska and her six-year-old daughter Katja. Ivana had endured years of abuse at the hands of her husband, Stojanche Jovanovski, who beat her two hours before she threw herself from a building with her daughter.
So if we follow how the initial news about the suspects Institution and System is likely to unfold, we’ll come to the realisation that Trust was right to escape. It realised that in the end it would be blamed for everything. There’ll be a preliminary investigation, then an investigation, then an indictment will be drafted, then the indictment will have to be confirmed, then Institution and System will appeal, then they will be placed under house arrest, then there will be a trial, then there will be countless delays, then the verdict from the Basic Court will make its way to the Appeals Court, then the Appeals Court will return the case for a retrial, then the Post Office won’t work, then the Basic Court will try to work out what was wrong with its first verdict… And time will pass. And the statute of limitations will expire.
In the meantime, institutions will be filled with personnel whose only qualification is that they were on a party employment list and are there to earn salaries from the state budget. They’re not hired for their expertise, are they? Or through an open competition: They all come from a party. One, another, a third… across all the institutions. From ministries to municipal inspections and social services. From the President of the country to museums and theatres. From courts and prosecutors’ offices to state hospitals and clinics.
That’s why Trust, the third suspect in the criminal association formed by Institution with the support of System, will never return from its escape. Because we citizens never seem to learn and understand that Institution and System are supposed to work for us. Not the other way round.
And at this point – no one can help us.
2 Speaking of security, I recalled Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski’s speech on Police Day on 7 May last year.
Congratulating police officers on their holiday at the Training Centre of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, he said their mission was sacred – to restore the people’s trust. That, he claimed, had now become possible because his government had ended the time when “criminals walked free, the state was silent, and citizens lived with a sense of powerlessness”.
On 7 May 2025, Mickoski also said that “security is not just statistics, it is a feeling”. I can’t speak for how other citizens feel about security, but nine months after the Prime Minister shared that piece of wisdom, statistics show that in just the first two months of this year four women have been murdered in this country simply because they were women.
Describing to police officers what security is supposed to feel like, Mickoski said “it is when a parent lets their children go to school without fear.” He said that on 7 May last year, less than two months after 63 people died in a fire at an illegal nightclub in Kochani, most of them young people, some of them were children.
Finally, the Prime Minister said that the feeling of security is “when a mother can return home late at night without fear.” Ivana from the Skopje neighbourhood of Taftalidze wasn’t returning home late at night. She was beaten in broad daylight by her husband, and the police recorded the incident only two hours before she committed suicide together with her daughter. And for years, social services had failed to protect either her or her child from the violent husband and father.
“The feeling of security is when every citizen knows that the state stands behind them,” the Prime Minister said on 7 May 2025.
Every day we see just how the country stands behind the people. With party loyalists overhired in institutions that don’t even consider that they’re there to serve the people. Instead, they’re willing to serve their party, because many of them, without a party, wouldn’t even dream of holding positions they’re not qualified for. They’re even willing to hate on the party’s command.
3 We used to laugh that ministers from the same government would stage PR around meeting one another, posing for pictures while shaking hands, issuing statements and posting them on Facebook. Lately, however, there’ve been more and more announcements about meetings between two or three directors of state institutions, complete with the pompous phrase about “interinstitutional cooperation”, where “the possibilities for mutual cooperation in the interest of the citizens were considered.”
Besides these state visits by directors of state institutions to one other, we now also have meetings where state institutions sign memorandums of cooperation with each other, including Skopje’ Municipalities with the City of Skopje. So, a burst of diplomatic activity, immortalised with photographs from all ten angles and posted on Facebook and Instagram, as if they’re resolving the situation in Iran, Dubai, Greenland, Gaza along with Cuba and Venezuela.
What’s next? Announcements and photographs confirming that they actually showed up to work and started working?
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
