1 On Wednesday, we’re celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the independent Macedonian state. Someone born on 8 September 1991 is turning thirty this year. The time has come for them to become a mayor, a minister, an MP… Those people don’t know of a state better organized than this one.
It’s not about Yugo-nostalgia. It’s not about longing for socialism. It’s not about longing for my youth. I’m just making comparisons. For instance, in the mid-1970s in Skopje were built the high schools “Orce Nikolov,” “Rade Jovcheski Korchagin,” “Nikola Karev,” the Post Office, the University Campus… The primary school “Ivan Goran Kovachikj” in Karposh 4, the current “Petar Pop Arsov” was opened as one of the most modern schools in all of Yugoslavia. The “8 September” Hospital, the Military Hospital at that time, was built according to the highest world standards of medical facilities architecture. All of that was built in a span of thirty years after the Second World War, in the republic which was devastated, the poorest, the most illiterate, and the least electrified. Plus, only 10 years had passed since the catastrophic Skopje earthquake. What have we built in Skopje in the last 30 years compared to these buildings? The school “Kiro Gligorov,” the Clinic of gynecology, a gazillion fake baroque buildings with offices for the state administration, whose facades are already falling apart.
Do you have the guts to go on an adventure called “traveling by train?” The trip from Skopje to Veles takes two hours, because the locomotive breaks down halfway and they have to wait for another one. Ten days ago, one of the passengers got sick, they called an ambulance, by the time the train reached the station, the doctor and the nurse had almost fallen asleep from boredom while waiting for her to arrive so they could help her. The train to Prilep left from Veles, but stopped at Bogomila. The machine stopped working. So they sent a new machine from Veles. And when the train was just about to arrive in Bitola, it stopped in the middle of Pelagonija because the rails were red-hot because of the burning stubble along the railway. The passengers got out of the train and poured the water they had left in their bottles on the rails so the train could start moving again.
That’s just one more in the series of events that would seem far-fetched if you put them in a film. Macedonia Express.
All those who’ll celebrate their thirtieth birthday on 8 September don’t know that in the 1970s another train called “Pelagonija Express“ used to run on the same tracks. A commuter train, faster even than the express one coming from Ljubljana. It used to leave Bitola early in the morning, stopped only in Prilep and Veles, people would get things done in Skopje and go back home in the afternoon. Is that Yugo-nostalgia? Is that longing for my youth, because my parents like many others used to send me on summer holidays to Pelister by that train, even at the time of the old train station? Or is it just a reminder of everything we’ve failed to maintain in the last thirty years of independence? Both the train and the holiday centre at Pelister are falling apart, as everything else.
As for the cable car that used to take us from Tetovo to Popova Shapka – on another occasion. If we’d been any good in these thirty years, we’d have turned Tetovo and Gostivar into Olympic cities. As for the thermal baths – don’t even get me started.
I haven’t heard of a country that has destroyed its own National and University Library. The Sarajevo Library was set on fire during the war. Ours if falling apart in times of peace.
It’s pointless to look for someone to blame for all the things we used to have that are now destroyed. The past thirty years, many governments have changed, many ministers, many MPs, many mayors, many directors of public institutions and enterprises… How come at least one of them, even for selfish reasons, didn’t dedicate himself to fixing the road to his town, to urbanizing his village, to ensuring better conditions for his children to study, get treatment and do sports?
They’re the ones to blame because it seems that once they sit in their company cars surrounded by a dozen bootlickers they forget where they’ve come from and think that everything starts with them. And we? We’re to blame because it doesn’t bother us.
2 Prime Minister Zoran Zaev says that if citizens don’t want to open their door to unvaccinated census takers, the state will send them ones who have been vaccinated.
Why would the Government even bring up the issue of vaccinated and unvaccinated census takers? It was a different situation in April, when we rushed to Serbia because there were no vaccines here. Now, there are plenty of vaccines to choose from. If Greece could send thousands of unvaccinated doctors and nurses on unpaid leave amid the fourth wave of the pandemic, then why would we tolerate unvaccinated census takers? Apparently such was the law, they didn’t want to discriminate them. Isn’t it discrimination if the census fails? Isn’t it discrimination that the country is yet again on all the blacklists for travelling, because the Government has allowed completely open borders for entry into the country, indoor weddings, has tolerated anti-vaxxer healthcare workers and incompetent staff under political patronage hired as directors of hospitals and health centres?
On the one hand, the Government has started a campaign on the moments of happiness if you get vaccinated, and on the other hand it gives an opportunity to all those who want to score political points from the anti-vaccination movement to preach at us about health, education, digitalization, virology, immunology, child psychology and psychology in general, an opportunity for them to not open their door to census takers.
They’re using billboard slogans to convince me to enumerate myself. “You are not just a number, take part in the census.” There’s no need for convincing at all. Being enumerated is a legal obligation. There is no choice in whether to obey the law or not. It has to be obeyed. If we really are a state.
Zaev had the courage to change the name and bring us into NATO. And because of bloody populism and Facebook democracy, amid the pandemic, he didn’t muster the courage to implement the Constitution and protect the public health.
3 One of those who profit the most brutally from the anti-vaccination movement is the leader of VMRO-DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski. At the beginning of August, he posted on Facebook that he had been vaccinated. And at the beginning of September he said on TV “I got vaccinated yesterday,” because apparently he was forced to get vaccinated because the government’s measures were catastrophically stupid.
Any guard at a pub can scan his code and check if Mickoski really got the first dose of the vaccine. I don’t know if he can be trusted this time. Especially because this isn’t the first time he’s sabotaged the safety measures against the coronavirus. Last year he lied that he hadn’t gone to the gym during curfew, when everything was closed. And when he got caught that the video was authentic because he was wearing protective gloves he said it was just the gleam of his hands. At one point there was a whole siege at Debar Maalo,
inspectorates and the city and state police were having a real back and forth on who was the competent authority during the technical government, just because he was in a pub with his friends, at a time when that was forbidden.
Well, that’s politics for you. And political profiteering is its by-product. Mickoski grounds his policies on the motto: “The worse it is for the country, the better it is for me.” However, this is no longer politics. Such unscrupulous lying isn’t shameful only for Mickoski as a party leader. It’s shameful for him as a person. That man is a university professor. We entrust him with educating our children.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
