1 Bulgarians are on a roll, they might hold early elections for the third time in just one year because they have a problem with us existing. The Bulgarian government coalition is falling apart because of Macedonia and Macedonians. The leader of the ruling coalition party “There is such a people” Slavi Trifonov says they’re leaving the coalition because of “Macedonia and the fact the state no longer has money”.
Is there a greater compliment for us than the recognition that Macedonians are more important to Bulgarians than their own country? Harassing Macedonia with the veto on the EU accession talks is more important to them than the fact their state no longer has money.
We’ll survive this June without the start of the EU accession talks. We’ll survive December as well. However, it’s about time we stopped wasting our time with Bulgarians.
Zoran Zaev tried everything with Boyko Borisov, he tried servility, tried sweet-talking him, hey brother, hey buddy, hey friend – nothing worked. Dimitar Kovachevski tried a more technocratic approach, with Harvard student Kiril Petkov and his working groups, to no effect – it’s no use. It was in vain that ministers and civil servants had to drive back and forth through the Deve Bair border crossing. Plus, there are so many potholes. I’m sure they’ve got better things to do. It’s not up to us to solve the domestic problems of Bulgaria or of the European Union.
It’s not worth wasting time or energy on some people and on some things. Let Bulgarians elect a Government which will find their own country more important than the veto on Macedonia, and then we can talk.
2 A few days ago, at the celebration of Sweden’s national day, the Swedish ambassador sang the Macedonian anthem out loud, on a microphone, and when she saw how insecurely we were looking at each other, wondering if it was ok for us to sing as well, she started waving her hand as if at a concert, come on, come on, sing along… “Macedonians fight for their rights”, sang the Swede, while we were shyly muttering the lyrics, out of respect for her.
Two months ago, at the celebration of the Dutch King’s birthday, the ambassador had invited an accordion player from the Netherlands, dressed in traditional clothes and clogs, who not only played, but also sang our anthem in Macedonian, all of it, properly, from begging to end, including the part “Goce Delchev, Pitu Guli, Dame Gruev, Sandanski…” Again, we looked at each other wondering who’d have the courage to start singing, we muttered the lyrics, although minutes earlier the Dutch sang their anthem out loud.
It seems it’s a bigger challenge for us to get rid of the pathological need for someone to constantly confirm that we exist than the one with the start of the EU accession talks. We’re a sovereign country, a member of the United Nations, a member of NATO, with our own culture, with our own literature in Macedonian, with national sport teams, with equal membership in hundreds of international organizations in all fields. Isn’t that reason enough to be happy, that every day we need confirmation that we exist, even from a showman who created a party in Bulgaria?
Forget about Bulgaria. We have a country of our own to lead and develop. We have friends who want to help us. We should pay more attention to them while they still want to help us. We should make working groups with them and stop losing our brain cells over Tsar Samuil.
We haven’t had an ambassador in Washington for four years because SDSM and DUI can’t decide who to please to go and live in America. Twenty teams of journalists rushed to Sofia to cover Petkov’s new government put on a show, whereas the start of the Strategic Dialogue with the United States is completely irrelevant compared to what the Bitola police commander reported to Bulgarian Minister Teodora Genchovska on the progress of the investigation on the arson at the door of the “Vancho Mihailov” club.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is visiting two pairs of capitals: Belgrade – Pristina and Skopje – Sofia. The choice of destinations is a precedent that indicates that the problem of Europe’s security is not only the “savages of the Western Balkans”, but also the government in the capital of an EU member state. Still, we find it more important to know what Karakachanov says, a failed politician no one cares about even in Bulgaria. It must be pointed out that Germany is our biggest trade partner and that there are 4-5 flights to Germany every day, unlike Petkov’s little plane which didn’t last even two months, twice a week. Since there was no need of that connection.
What about the United Kingdom, a proven friendly country that during its presidency of the EU, when the British were still members of the Union, in December 2005, made it possible for Macedonia to receive candidate status? A country whose diplomacy in 1992, when they held the presidency of the then European Community, saved Macedonia from the Greek trap of making it impossible for us to be recognized and moved the decision-making process from bureaucratic Brussels to the United Nations.
The fact that Bulgaria is blocking our EU membership doesn’t necessarily block our relations with other EU countries that prove their friendship on a daily basis.
Take, for example, the Netherlands. Since the declaration of independent Macedonia, the Netherlands has been the biggest donor of all EU member states. Network with them, learn the rule of law, learn how to earn from agriculture ten times more than now. Network with Estonia, learn how to digitalize public services. Sweden and Denmark can teach you how to fight corruption and how to be transparent when it comes to spending public money. Finland can teach you how to reform education. Network with Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, in those countries there are people studying your language and respect you for who you are and you’ll be able to share your Slavic cultural heritage with friends. Austria can teach you about mountain and lake tourism, recycling, alternative energy sources… Italy can teach us how to preserve our cultural heritage. Rejoice in Croatia’s success and learn how a country that was admitted to the EU last managed to overtake Bulgaria and Romania, to introduce the euro and join the Schengen area. At least they and the Slovenes are one of us, they still sometimes sing Macedonian songs.
All those countries said they wanted Macedonia in the EU. As early as 2020, they all said that we had met the conditions for the start of the accession talks. And they all said they’d help Macedonia join the EU. There’s a lot we can learn from them, there’s a lot we can share with them. Still, our politicians are wasting their time with Bulgaria. It seems to me they’re doing it intentionally, since the only thing we can learn from Bulgaria is how to steal a billion euros from EU accession funds.
3 When for the sake of good neighbourliness we allowed the state leadership of a country that cuts us dead open a club bearing the name of a fascist collaborator and an enemy of Macedonians, it was only a matter of time before the ticking bomb exploded. The very opening of a club named “Vancho Mihailov” in the Jewish neighbourhood in Bitola, from where the Bulgarian fascist administration deported Jews to the Treblinka concentration camp in March 1943, is a provocation for the town in whose park are lined up the busts of the partisans killed in the anti-fascist war. In fact, the club served as a bait the moment Petkov was opening it and Bulgarian Vice President Iliana Iotova was wondering in the middle of Bitola “who are those Macedonian people, what is that Macedonian language”?
Was it the singer Lambe Alabakovski the one who set the fire and who’ll be tried, who’s protesting and why they are protesting, which flags they are flying and whose portraits are set on fire has already entered a phase of small talk. The main question is how this country, misinterpreting what good neighbourliness is, allowed such a club to be opened, a club named after a fascist and enemy of the Macedonian people. This is our country. And in our country we say whether it’s allowed to glorify the name of a fascist collaborator.
Even Bulgarians themselves say that they find it more important for Macedonia to burn than for Bulgaria not to go bankrupt. And we ourselves buried a Russian-Bulgarian land mine in the middle of Bitola.
4 VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski missed the biggest and probably last chance to get rid of the crimes and atrocities that his party committed during the time Nikola Gruevski was in power. He had 5 years to dissociate himself from those crimes, but he doesn’t want to. There is now a court ruling for confiscation of party property, which is still not effective, that he calls political persecution although during the trial it was proved that the party property was acquired through abuse of power and abuse of party funds. So now he inspires his members by saying there’s no democracy in Macedonia.
When is it an instance of no democracy? When the ruling party steals, builds a luxury headquarters and buys property all over the country? Or when what’s been stolen is returned to the people who were robbed?
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
