1On my ID card I’ll write that I’m Martian. I don’t know, I just feel like doing it. I watched the landing of NASA’s rover, I got a little excited and suddenly Mars made my heart sing. It felt like home. Like that’s where I come from.
What? I won’t be able to write that in because Martians haven’t been listed in the Constitution’s Preamble? But, you can identify there as one, two, three, four different nationalities… and the sentence ends with “and others.” Let’s say that I’m one of the others. Let’s say that I have friends who are so happy they’re among the first to get vaccinated against COVID-19 that now they want their ID card to state their ethnicity is Pfizer. Although, that too could cause family discord because the spouse might want to write in BioNTech. Is it allowed to write in Sputnik? Or those ethnic groups don’t fall into the “others” category, but in the “utterly others” one.
We live in strange times, you wake up one day and you have to decide what you’ll identify as for the next 10 years, while your ID card is valid. Children whose parents are of different nationalities will have to choose from the age of 14 who they love more, their mother or their father.
Let’s see if anyone dares to forbid me to write in that I’m Martian. I won’t even consider the Commission for Prevention of Corruption. Nor will I waste my time looking for justice at the Constitutional Court. Since the law is fast-tracked because it displays the European flag, I will act in a European-like fashion. I’m going straight to court in Strasbourg.
The Assembly, the political elite and the public are trying to find the logic in something that’s completely illogical amidst a pandemic. Do you see how pointless our dialogue is? Wonderful. The fun is yet to come on the Assembly TV channel.
The rover was launched in July 2020 and after seven months, it landed on Mars yesterday. And how much work have our politicians done during those seven months? A field for ethnicity in the ID card. I almost forgot one more achievement – the trilingual road signs. A double accomplishment.
2 Prime Minister Zoran Zaev says that it was a promise he made to the political party BESA so they’d make a pre-electoral coalition, but I don’t get it why BESA would be happy with such marking. How will life get better for the voters of BESA just by stating they’re Albanian in their ID cards? Are they satisfied with everything else in the country that they’re asking politicians to grant them this? Is there nothing else that BESA could offer citizens for a better life, that they resort to this? We’ll write in our nationality in the ID cards, because the task of inspecting the road signs was taken from us by DUI.
Zaev says that this way “we’re taking into account the rights of the ethnic groups and the smaller ethnic groups.”
How has this improved the rights of the diverse ethnic groups? Who has ever forbidden anyone else to say what they are in this country? Go to the square and shout “I’m Martian.” Get a tattoo on your forehead if you want to be marked so bad. Put an armband on your sleeve, a badge on your lapel, let it tell people what you are. But the ID card? How will your national feeling be boosted by something that stays in your pocket or in your bag and is only seen by front desk clerks and police officers checking if your photo matches? What? When you go to the bank and they see what your nationality is will they give you more money? Will they modify your loan? Will they extend the time for repayment? Or maybe they’ll be afraid of you and they’ll go easy on you? Yikes, that guy just came; do you know what’s written on his ID card?
Should the bank clerk be interested in what your nationality is? Should the police officer asking to see your ID card be interested in what your ethnicity is? Should the public administration clerk know what you are for you to do whatever you were supposed to do there? Or will everyone have to go to “their” clerk.
This has nothing to do with the idea of “one society for all” that Zaev promotes. By trying to appease everyone, he’ll start apartheid. Everyone will be marked, everyone will know who’s who. Today marked with our ethnicity, tomorrow with something else.
Sorry, but I really can’t find neither an emotional, nor a practical use of marking us with our ethnicity.
3 President Stevo Pendarovski in an interview for MKD.MK said that “there is no democratic country in the world where the ID card shows the citizen’s ethnic or religious affiliation. However, I do not think that if the law is passed with that provision that there will be any negative consequences.”
If the president says that nowhere in the world can you find such nonsense like the one BESA asked for, and Zaev gave a besa (pledge of honor) to fulfill it, then what he can do is not sign the law. He can return it to the Assembly so they discuss it and vote for it a second time if they have nothing better to do. The EU regulation in August, this year, will ban sharing personal data which states the racial, ethnic, religious and political affiliation, and the MPs are passing a law displaying the EU flag, as if they’re aligning standards with the EU.
So, I find Pendarovski’s opinion completely irrelevant if he does indeed put his signature on something he’s not sure he should sign. What benefit does the country have from citizen Stevo’s opinion? Citizen Stevo can share his opinions over a cup of coffee with his friends. But when president Stevo shares his opinions with the citizens, they expect him to do something based on those opinions. That way even the opinion would be statesmanlike.
4The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bujar Osmani, in an interview for the TV show “Triling”, said that once we had restored the momentum of communication with Bulgaria it became clear to him that “Bulgaria doesn’t deny the identity attributes, in other words the language and the ethnic affiliation of the citizens who belong here, in other words the identity of the citizens.”
Here!? Is it Bujar Osmani who’s saying this? Or is it Ekatrina Zaharieva? Whose team is he in? Zaev’s or Borisov’s? What’s the thing that became clear to the Macedonian Minister of Foreign Affairs? He accepted the narrative of the Bulgarian Government that they’re not denying our identity, although they put a veto exactly because they’re against the negotiating framework mentioning Macedonian people and a Macedonian language.
In that case, it’s great that things are as Osmani says they are. Since there isn’t a problem, then let them accept the formulation Macedonian language, Macedonian people as the Germans wrote in the negotiating framework and what the other 26 member states of EU agreed on, let them remove the veto so we can start the negotiations. Sooner or later, we’ll get to the chapter on the data on the ID cards. Here.
5The whole thing with the EU is starting to make no sense. It’s not just about the vaccines, because we can see that they messed up things even for themselves. They were just the cherry on top of the disappointment with the Bulgarian veto. Bulgaria is the biggest culprit that we get less and less excited about that topic. No matter how pro-European you are, how sensible you are, emotions will take over you at some point. You simply can’t be indifferent if Bulgaria is humiliating you, and its partners are powerless to help you.
And what’s going on? Will we start the negotiations? Are we waiting for the date? It can’t be done during Portugal’s presidency, but Slovenia will put the enlargement issue back on the agenda? Germany hasn’t given up? Alright, alright, it’s fine. You don’t have to explain yourselves.
We used to have some hope, then there would be a feeling of euphoria, then it would be followed by disappointment, then we would believe a certain promise, then you have to wait a little longer, then there’s one more thing you need to do, then it’s us who needs to sort things out…And now? Now we’re in a situation when it’s not like you don’t care, but somehow indifference gets the best of us. They say something; it goes in one ear and out the other. You’re neither mad, not angry, nor do you have the energy or the urge to explain yourself. It’s sort of all the same to you. Like when you break up with your girlfriend. First you’re worried, then unease eats you up, you can’t stop thinking about who she’s with, where she’s going, what she’s doing… And one day she passes by you with another guy, and you don’t even turn back to look at her.
It turns out, life could be good even without her.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
