Dear friends,

These are the days when we usually check where we’re at, where we were, how far we’ve come. The title of this year’s final edition of “Sakam da kazam” is taken from the subheading of the column published on 18 November. What follows are all the subheadings from the columns published from 7 January to 23 December this year. As you’ll notice, I keep coming back to the same topics. Not just this passing year, but the last thirty years.

Let’s hope next year life will bring up new topics for us. The railway to Sofia can wait, since I still find that direction to the EU hard to believe, but if nothing else, let’s at least not write about the motorway to Ohrid again.

I wish you good health. Enjoy the holidays.

• How should I feel about the year that started with fierce quarrels over Toma and Nole.

 

• A NATO member state has found itself in a situation where not only the political, but also the energy, and thus the economic stability, depends on a company with Russian businessmen on its supervisory board.

 

• We no longer fall for Bulgaria’s signals. There’s only one good signal – let them lift the veto on Macedonia.

 

• If we don’t start the negotiations during the Serbian presidency of the EU, then the first intergovernmental conference will certainly be held during the Montenegrin presidency.

 

• The world Goce Delchev dreamed of – simply doesn’t exist.

 

• The government has increased the workers’ salaries. Now they should do the same for the work-dodgers.

 

• The innocent wave of Bulgarian MEP Dzhambaski isn’t a Nazi salute. It’s an administrator’s salute. That’s how the administrators of Macedonia from 1941 to 1943 used to wave like.

 

• Putin is punishing Ukrainians for not being Russians. Radev is punishing Macedonians for not being Bulgarians. And the EU? The EU is “deeply concerned”.

 

• In the EU there’s a natural order of things. First Goce Delchev, then Ukraine.

 

• Let America defend us, but Putin lead us.

 

• When the Government says that the public administration should spend less money, it’s even more apparent how much money goes down the drain.

 

• We’ve already decided. The question is whether the EU has decided for Macedonia to join the EU. Or will they let Russia take us?

 

• As if we didn’t already have it rough waiting to be granted a European future by having to decide who tsar Samuil belongs to, we now have to worry about the European future of the Europeans, in case Russia divides them.

 

• Ah, if employees in private companies could organize a counter strike and refuse to pay the social contributions which earn the salaries of the state administration, at least for a month. But the state doesn’t care about the taxpayers, it doesn’t negotiate with them and doesn’t pamper them.

 

• That’s what our state is. A large illegal construction without a licence. And the worst thing is that it doesn’t bother anyone. Even if it did, who would we complain to, since even the ones we pay to be bothered by it, aren’t.

 

• The next condition will be – how about you stop overdoing anti-fascism if you want to join the EU.

 

• Which private company could deal with the production of 20,000 faulty products?

 

• The way Mickoski is hell-bent on getting early elections, you’d think Gruevski has already bought a ticket home to return from his asylum in Budapest.

 

• The Real EU and the AliExpress EU. Macédoine du Nord, zéro point.

 

• You can’t tell who’s crazier. Is it Bulgarians for asking Macedonians to prove that they exist or Macedonians for getting involved in a process of having to prove they exist?

 

• What can we, the private-sector employees, use to blackmail the government if our salaries are not increased?

 

• Since you’re spending too much time on Facebook, at least read that the Prime Minister has a plan.

 

• We’re wasting our time with Bulgaria. The only thing we can learn from them is how to steal a billion euros from EU accession funds.

 

• That’s what Putin says, but Putin is not Radev.

 

• So, the EU takes it seriously that Bulgaria wants Macedonians to become Bulgarians.

 

• Has our government asked for guarantees from the other EU member states that they won’t be complicit in Bulgaria’s harassment in the future?

 

• Instead of providing stability, the EU is destabilizing Macedonia through Bulgaria.

 

• But, why the hell did you people in the EU even accept starting a discussion about our existence and the existence of our Macedonian language?

 

• If we were proper citizens, we’d flood our “contact point” – the Macedonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with at least a million complaints about Bulgaria’s hate speech towards the Macedonian language.

 

• Let us take our holiday back. Let us celebrate the Republic, not the parties.

 

• It’s difficult to survive in Macedonia on humour alone. This disease requires a much stronger medicine.

 

• What benefits will citizens have from the tax reform, when in our country the following rule applies: Criminals will be granted a pardon and a long holiday in Struga, the bandits affiliated to the party will be given tenders, whereas the companies and the law-abiding citizens will be given taxes.

 

• One society for all doesn’t mean that the state should be fair to everyone, except for the ones paying tax.

 

• We shouldn’t save electricity. It’s not ok for the country to punish law-abiding payers because of law-breaking non-payers. If the police catch the thieves – no one will be under the weather.

 

• A torrential rain of less than half an hour in the capital showed how fake the term “investors” is in the field of construction, “investors” whose interests have been protected by each local and state government since 1991.

 

• If the alternative for the incompetence of SDSM and the arbitrariness of DUI is the current VMRO-DPMNE reinforced by Levica, then the future is bleak. We should try to save ourselves from all of them.

 

• If we can’t steal, we’ll quit.

 

• In a crisis, let’s sacrifice the children first. Kids can stay at home, while public administration employees are nice and warm in their offices.

 

• We’re in for a grim winter, the Covid crisis is still not over, prices are rising, Putin is threatening a nuclear disaster, and the stability of our country depends on the parties fighting over money.

 

• Let’s equate fascism with anti-fascism, peacefully and with dignity.

 

• Americans have decided to renovate our Second World War monuments, too. They seem to be more aware of how significant anti-fascism is for our county than all of our authorities put together.

 

• Give them money. And don’t touch the buttons.

 

• We’re building the railway, the railway is building us.

 

• Our partisans are turning in their graves with such speed that we could generate electricity.

 

• Who should we call to change the system when even the Prime Minister has realised it’s no good? The new US Ambassador?

 

• Let life come.

 

• With Japan’s help, Macedonia got a space programme as well.

 

• We’re not the ones who’ll bring Gruevski back.

 

• Officials’ life is made difficult because our people corrupts them.

 

• In this country, the only ones getting punished are the taxpayers who regularly pay their taxes and fines.

 

• No matter if they’re stealing in the name of Macedonianness or in the name of EU integrations, it’s all the same.

 

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski