1 One would think that it’s all rainbows and sunshine in our country, judging by how obsessively SDSM has latched onto the issue of accepting migrants denied asylum in the UK, as reported by the British media. So when Venko Filipche appeared almost frantically at a press conference to announce a social-democratic battle against migrants, I was caught off guard. He went so far as to call for mobilisation, and said they’d hold protests, they’d collect signatures… They’re trying to out-VMRO VMRO. Their premise is about as VMRO as it gets.
This whole episode and debate in which the government and the opposition are competing to see who’s more against migrants feels like time travel to me. It’s as if we’re back in 2017, when municipal councils where VMRO-DPMNE held the majority organised referendums inviting citizens to declare that there should be no migrants in their municipalities. Do you remember the panic that spread when representatives of a civic initiative called “Awakening” were collecting signatures against migrants in city squares, all municipalities run by VMRO-DPMNE?
After all, the migrant issue was initially raised by VMRO-DPMNE while it was still in opposition. And SDSM began milking the story, going so far as to announce the submission of a parliamentary resolution against “migrants for money”. Apparently, they tried to beat VMRO at its own game.
However, their move backfired. What did VMRO-DPMNE do? It did what it does best. In the Assembly, it passed a counter-resolution, preventing opposition MPs from speaking about migrants. The MPs from the ruling majority adopted a resolution that “calls on all political entities and public figures to be responsible in public speech, respect the facts, and refrain from spreading lies and manipulations that can cause social tensions and disrupt public order and peace.”
The government could simply have waited for SDSM to submit its resolution. The text would have reached the Assembly, they would have put it to a vote, they would have voted on it, and they would have closed the matter. But no. A show of force was required.
All right, it’s not exactly the same as 24 December 2012, when VMRO-DPMNE booted SDSM MPs out of the Assembly during the Budget vote. It’s not the same as 27 April, 2017, during the organised attack on Parliament, when their honorary leader Nikola Gruevski said of the SDSM MPs that “if they had wanted to kill them, they would have killed them”. This time, they’ll just prosecute them if they dare think differently from the government coalition of VMRO-DPMNE, ZNAM and VLEN.
We’ll now move from the topic of migrants to the topic of how to find an excuse to silence the opposition. Precisely in the Parliament. A fine example of continuity in the parliamentary democratic tradition in the spirit of VMRO-DPMNE.
2 The Mayor of Skopje, Orce Gjorgjievski, says that he’s “never seen more united Skopje residents than on the evening when we lit the Christmas tree.”
United? Yeah right. They sent invitation to municipalities with VMRO mayors, “encouraging them to motivate the primary schools in their municipality to attend the ceremonial lighting of the New Year’s Christmas tree with as many pupils as possible”. Just so that the new mayor could then announce that “this evening will go down in history and will grow into a beautiful tradition”.
If Orce has never seen more united Skopje residents in one place, perhaps he hasn’t lived in Skopje? In a split second, I thought of at least a dozen events where I had seen more united Skopje residents on Macedonia Square than at Orce’s Christmas tree, and that’s just within my own lifetime. And Skopje existed much longer before either me or the mayor. We celebrated Macedonia’s independence in 1991 in the same place. And we sang to celebrate Kometal becoming handball champions. Let’s not forget our fourth place at the European Basketball Championship. Or the moment we received EU candidate status, while it was snowing at the square. Or when we lowered Karolina with a huge Macedonian flag from the warrior’s horse to mark the 20th anniversary of independence… The list goes on.
And not only celebrations. Citizens stood united at protests too. As well as at open-air concerts by both Macedonian and foreign artists.
For four years, Macedonia Square was left to sink into darkness under their Danela Arsovska and now, suddenly, Orce has come along to tell us that history begins with him.
The Christmas tree was lit, that finally happened too, the capital is decorated for the New Year. There’ll be a celebration on Macedonia Square as well. But not everything has to be historic, including the lighting of a Christmas tree, and, by the way, the bins are still not emptied regularly. The buses still don’t arrive on time. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea for the Mayor of Skopje, together with all the municipal mayors who turned up for the lighting of the Christmas tree, to check on the swarms of mice from their pre-election PR campaign about the rubbish.
It’s just a Christmas tree. This year it looks like this, next year it will look different.
3 I find it simply unbelievable how the government creates an illusion, then lives happily inside the illusion it has created, and is surprised when others refuse to believe in it.
In that parallel reality, the air in Skopje is cleaner than in Vienna. All those who’ve moved abroad have started coming back to the country, as Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski says. And VMRO-DPMNE has even managed to restore the country’s name in practice. How? Well, as Mickoski puts it: “Even Venko, who couldn’t take North out of his mouth, is now using Macedonia.”
Ah, so Venko was the problem.
And here’s the punchline: “In principle, I’m not a person who likes censorship or threats, so for me, the name Macedonia is sacred, and it is my right to freedom of speech to say what I think.”
For the Prime Minister, the following applies: I didn’t vote for “North”, therefore the Constitution doesn’t apply to me.
4 A former councillor in the City of Skopje, from the ruling VMRO-DPMNE party, turned up at the Skopje Zoo and held meetings with employees for an entire week, claiming he would be their new director.
That’s the reality we live in. The party tells someone that he’ll be appointed as director of a public institution, he then summons the employees of that enterprise to meetings without any formal document confirming his appointment, and they attend the meetings, despite having no official notification as to who their director actually is.
Forget the law, forget procedure. The party stands above everything. The only thing procedures and the party have in common is the first letter.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
