1 In just a couple of days, we had three huge toxic fires in the capital, endangering the health of half a million people, we had a double murder in Veles committed by a thug already reported and tried for domestic violence, we have daily protests against pollution, a protest marking the six months since the Kochani nightclub fire that killed 62 young people, and another protest against the rising number of femicides, murders of women simply because they’re women, and Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski has only this to say: “If you do a brief analysis yourself, you will see who benefits from this situation.”
Are we the ones who are supposed to carry out an analysis? If so, why are we even paying various secret services, police, prosecutors, judges, regulatory bodies, mayors, inspectors, both state and municipal, ministers, the first deputy minister, and the rest of the deputy prime ministers? And why, in the end, should we pay the prime ministers if he says: “The citizens will find the answer very easily”? Mickoski feeds us riddles. Instead of playing Wordle, let’s puzzle out the hostile centres of power “who do not want Macedonia to be a successful country, who do not want us to have a stable Macedonia that will develop, succeed, grow, rule by law, with no corruption and crime…”
Because, of course, Macedonia today is the shining example of a successful country, it succeeds, rules by law, with no corruption and crime.
2 When it comes to the fire in Kochani, we all saw mobile phone footage showing how the ceiling of the makeshift nightclub caught fire, so there should be no dilemma over whether that too was a deliberate attack by some centre of power.
What’s changed since Kochani? In terms of procedures, plans, safety measures, parking, accessibility, inspections…? For three days, mayors posed for photos while checking hydrants and that was it.
Judging by the way the entire society behaves after a series of accidents, we have learned absolutely nothing. Here, not even a series of tragedies with so many victims is enough to shake us into our senses. And I mean everyone, but especially the authorities. For a whole week, they couldn’t even agree on whether the fires were a hybrid attack. Honestly, I’m no longer sure whether we have institutions capable of detecting a hybrid attack. With institutions likes these, and with people like these overstaffed in them, if a hybrid attack really does happen tomorrow, we won’t know what hit us.
God forbid, but every time I write after an accident, I’m afraid of jinxing things. Yet if even Kochani, with 62 young lives lost, over 200 injured, and the trauma of an entire city, and even an entire country, was not a tragedy terrible enough to mark a turning point, then we are truly living in a situation of impending doom.
You might die in a night club, succumb to burns in a hospital, or be run over by a motorbike on a park footpath, and no one will be held accountable, you might drown in a flood because canals haven’t been cleared, a bus might overturn after passing a technical inspection at a service run by the very same owner, you can keep reporting a thug to the police, but he’ll come to your house and kill you, your neighbour might build a building, clog your sewer, a bar owner might harass an entire neighbourhood with loud music, while those who should stop him are at the bar with glasses in their hands, toasting…
We’ve been under a hybrid attack by a corrupt system of incompetent politicians for 34 years. And the easiest way to manage disasters caused by corruption and incompetence is to invent an enemy.
3 Even now, after the recent fires, it doesn’t look as though the government is addressing the systemic flaws. What they care about at the moment is bragging. How heroic they were, because someone told the prime minister that when electronic waste and batteries burn, as in Trubarevo in Skopje, the fire can last for days, but they managed to bury it in 30 hours, and there was no smoke.
Let’s not forget that in those thirty hours we neither saw no heard from Izet Mexhiti, who isn’t just a deputy prime minister, but the first deputy prime minister and, on top of that, minister of environmental protection on top of that. The minister vanished in a puff of smoke and ended up in Chair, for pre-election rallies for an election campaign that hasn’t legally begun. On the very evening when Skopje was covered in smoke and reeked of burning rubber, we had no minister of the environment. Izet Mexhiti was a mayoral candidate.
4 What we learned from the Kochani fire is that the party is more important than young lives.
And the fires in Skopje confirmed that party activity matters more than the terrible reality.
On the very evening of the Trubarevo fire, while the capital was covered in a black cloud of smoke, and not a single institution would say what was in it, what we were breathing, and whether it was safe to breathe at all, the mayor of Centar, Goran Gerasimovski of the opposition SDSM, organised a concert in the City Park. Because, of course, a concert can never be cancelled.
Whatever. The party went ahead. People danced and sang with the mayor, who also happens to be a candidate for these local elections, and posed for photos with him, posting them online as if the Municipality had done something extraordinary. After that evening, when they had no problem breathing in the stench, singing and smiling with their mouths open outdoors, the next morning, indoors, the SDSM spokeswoman appeared wearing a protective medical mask and held a press conference declaring “the government is making a circus out of the fires.”
They really are all over the place and have lost touch with reality.
5 When Prime Minister Mickoski says: “The time when the administration was political prey is over, departisation is coming,” I can only picture his loyal members, overstaffed in the administration with hundreds of made-up job positions, smiling and winking at each other, laughing at the joke their leader has just cracked – ooh, look, I’m trembling with fear.
Generic training!? What’s that? Some project imported from abroad? Yeah, right. They went through the trouble of finishing their degrees in vain, from private faculties, no less, the ones you race through by paying, they got their certificates in vain, they paid for language studios in vain… Is it in vain that they applaud and take photos while Mickoski inspects construction works in their neighbourhoods? As if all of that weren’t enough, now they have to complete a generic training, how will they ever manage to bridge a few days into a long weekend?
Children, stop leaving the country. The Prime Minister says there’ll be no more party-based hiring.
Until the first job call after the elections.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
