1 Kiril Bozhinovski, Dragi Rashkovski, Muhamed Zekiri… Continue the sequence. It turns out that the post of Secretary General of the Government is a profitable business.
With all due respect to the presumption of innocence, it’s very interesting to note that since 2010, three Secretaries General of the Government have been taken to court. Zekiri is suspected of embezzling state money, and Rashovski and Bozhinovski are already on trial. No matter how the proceedings against all three of them end, a new Secretary General of the Government will have to be elected so perhaps it’s not a bad idea for the criteria to state, besides the job description, that they mustn’t abuse their office.
2 It seems that the job descriptions of all officials should also include – losing touch with reality. Truth be told, Zekiri resigned. On the other hand, Minister of Justice Nikola Tupanchevski is still trying to get off the hook by making all sorts of excuses for attending the football match in Palermo. Now he’s mad at his colleague Slavica Grkovska, the Deputy Prime Minister for Good Governance, for giving him a written warning for violating the Code of Ethics for Officials and for hiding information from the public. In an interview with TV 21, he said he won’t accept the warning, since he paid for his accommodation and didn’t have to pay for the tickets for the flight and the match because he was invited by the Football Federation of Macedonia (FFM).
If Tupanchevski weren’t a Minister of Justice, would he be invited by the FFM to get on a plane and cheer for Macedonia from the box seats? What else was he supposed to do, they invited him, didn’t they? He wanted to indulge them, so he flew to Palermo. It’s not like the FFM twisted his arm to get him to go, but it’d be rude for him to offend them by not accepting their invitation.
Instead of being all stubborn with the deputy prime minister, whose job is to point out the unethical behavior of the officials, Tupanchevski had a chance to get out of the situation immediately after returning from Italy. He could’ve just said “sorry, I didn’t assess the situation, I love football, but it’s not ok for me to accept gifts because I’m a minister, I got carried away, it was a historic moment, but I now understand the message, I thank the journalists for pointing out my mistake, I encourage them to continue to demand accountability and as long as I am an official earning a salary provided by the taxpayers I will not accept offers that compromise my independence”.
But, nooo. He doesn’t admit he was wrong. If he’s not wrong, that means he’ll repeat the offence in the future as well. Other ministers and officials will behave like him. If the Minister of Justice can do it, why wouldn’t they do it? If the Minister of Justice doesn’t accept the warning from the Government, why would they accept it? And why would there be a Deputy Prime Minister for Good Governance at all?
It’s an interesting phenomenon how an ordinary citizen turns into a government official. As a university law professor, you’re an honest defender of human rights and good governance. But when the lights of the government cars start flashing and when you’re deafened by the sirens of the police escort going nee-naw, you immediately lose touch with the real world. You think you’re entitled to the privileges. That’s why rejecting them doesn’t cross your mind.
3 Do you know anyone who’s got something done at a counter of a state or municipal institution on a Friday, after 12 o’clock? Last Thursday and Friday, clerks from the administration went on strike and refused to work from 10 to 12 o’clock. I wonder how many people got things done in the other 6 hours. Since they had to wait for the clerks to come back to work with shopping bags after the strike. We all saw that during the Covid lockdowns we were just fine without some of them, while they were home, cooking.
It’s not a problem that the employees in state institutions demand higher salaries. The problem is that they expect their salaries to be higher than the ones of the employees in the private sector, whose social contributions are used to pay for their salaries. Still, the biggest problem is that for 30 years the state has been taking care only of the public administration, since the parties want to secure their votes, and no one cares about the taxpayers who provide the salaries of the voters under political patronage. Just as they don’t care about the employees taking breaks to have a cup of coffee, to have a smoke, to have breakfast, to make a quick run to the market, they don’t care about the maximum number of days of their annual leave, bridge days, days off for moving house, birthdays, someone giving birth, weddings, deaths…
Over 140,000 employees in the public sector receive salaries and wages from the social contributions and income tax paid by employees in the private sector. Ah, if employees in private companies could organize a counter strike and refuse to pay the social contributions at least for a month. But the state doesn’t negotiate with them and doesn’t pamper them. It will take their money for sure. The parties have created a culture in which people who are employed “by the state” are convinced that they’ve earned their privileges by doing their duty to the party.
4 The leader of VMRO-DPMNE Hristijan Mickoski in an interview with TV Alsat said that “if we want to build a state based on knowledge and competencies, party membership must not be a criterion for employment, but knowledge and skills”.
Mickoski was of sound mind when he said that. He’s mocking the intelligence of all citizens, including the ones who had to bring 10, 20, 40 voters in order to get a state job, or to keep their jobs. Was it ideology that forced them to send text messages after everyone on the party list had voted?
He even complains that his mayors would employ architects, construction workers, heating engineers and plumbers in their municipalities, but there aren’t any since all of them have moved abroad. Why did they move abroad? They weren’t driven away because they didn’t know how to dance the chain dances at Komitadji evenings, were they?
If he wants to lead a state “based on knowledge and competencies, and party membership must not be a criterion for employment”, then why did the new mayors fire the previous directors who had been appointed by SDSM? Are the new mayors not members of a political party?
5 We shouldn’t be surprised by the statement of Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama that Albania will ask to be removed from the package with Macedonia for the start of the EU accession talks. Albania is trying to find a solution to their problem. The Bulgarian veto on Macedonia proved to be a millstone around their neck as well. And they’re now trying to get rid of it.
The EU countries are now busy with the war in Ukraine. They were caught off guard by the Russian invasion, which was announced as early as 2014. They don’t have the time to think about the Western Balkans. They’ve forgotten the lessons where small problems become big ones overnight. We’ve just marked the 30th anniversary of the siege of Sarajevo and over 15,000 dead in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina alone, among which 1,600 children, and every tenth child killed by a sniper.
Yet, they encourage us: Continue with the reforms and come to an agreement with Bulgaria whether you exist.
Go on, swim with a stone around your neck and your hands and legs tied. We’ll drown in this Balkan hole with the stone the European Union put around our neck. When the water reaches their neck, it will be too late. The same way they were late with Ukraine. They still don’t believe that Europe is at war.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
