1 The fact that the new State Prosecutor, Nenad Saveski, stripped prosecutor Lenche Ristoska of the two cases she was handling against the ruling VMRO-DPMNE is for the common good. Didn’t Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski say just last week, from the parliament rostrum, that he wouldn’t rest until Saveski met his expectations regarding which cases to pursue and to cut ties with prosecutors from the former Special Public Prosecutor’s Office? So Saveski promptly relieved Ristoska of the cases. To calm Mickoski down. It’s not in the public interest for the Prime Minister to be anxious.
To be fair, after the Prime Minister publicly laid out his instructions, the newly elected State Prosecutor told journalists that, if they respect his integrity, they shouldn’t describe his decisions as political.
“I have never been a member of a political party,” said Saveski.
Well, none of the prosecutors and judges are party members. They’re simply aligned with whichever party happens to be in power. After all, party membership isn’t a prerequisite for doing what the ruling party expects of you.
Nenad Saveski also said that he had nothing personal against the former Special Prosecutor, Lenche Ristoska. Removing a prosecutor from a case just before the conclusion of two trials against the ruling party is by no means a personal decision. And this is a prosecutor whom the ruling VMRO-DPMNE has, for years, been declaring “finished”.
Don’t get worked up. Stay calm.
2 On the issue of including Bulgarians in our Constitution as a condition for starting negotiations with the EU, Prime Minister Mickoski said that “we will not budge, we will wait, if not us, we will pass it on to whoever comes next, and if they fail, then to whoever comes after them”.
In addition to seeking guarantees that Bulgaria won’t impose new vetoes on identity-related issues in the future, the Prime Minister is now demanding that Bulgaria recognise the right to political association of the Macedonian minority there. Perhaps the Prime Minister is guided by some special engineering logic, but I struggle to follow the reasoning as to why one million and eight hundred thousand citizens living in Macedonia should remain isolated for decades because of the threatened rights of citizens within the EU?
Those people are EU citizens, after all. They vote for a prime minister in Bulgaria, an EU country, they vote for Members of the European Parliament, they have their own commissioner and various directors within the European Commission… The Macedonians who live here but have declared themselves Bulgarian in order to obtain a Bulgarian passport are EU citizens too. Only we Macedonians who live here and have only a Macedonian passport are not EU citizens.
What’s truly inspiring is the way Prime Minister Mickoski tests our patriotism when he says we are ready to wait for generations to join the EU, while standing behind him is the Minister of Energy, Sanja Bozhinovska, who holds both Czech and Bulgarian passports. What exactly is Mickoski trying to tell us? Work it out for yourselves, as the minister has. Just as thousands of his fellow party members, voters and supporters have worked it out by obtaining Bulgarian passports.
Let the prime minister ask the lorry drivers, who can’t work in the European Union for more than 90 days in any six-month period whether they’re willing to wait for decades to be given the opportunity to earn a living. At the moment, they’re preparing to block the borders again, and business will suffer again. Let him ask the businesspeople who hold only a Macedonian passport, let him ask the workers who didn’t pay bribes to various intermediaries for Bulgarian citizenship, let him ask the students, postgraduates, doctors, nurses, scientists, journalists, athletes, tourists…
Abroad, they harass us at every Schengen border, herding us into separate lines as if we were lepers, they photograph us and take our fingerprints to check whether we may have overstayed by a single day, as though we’re wasting their precious European air by breathing it. And here, the Prime Minister tells us: two hours of harassment at the border aren’t enough, and so long as you vote for me, you’ll wait for decades.
Why doesn’t he fight in Brussels and in other European capitals against the humiliation of the Macedonian citizens who elected him here? Why doesn’t he tell them, there, I will not rest while I watch you mistreat and belittle my fellow citizens who voted for me in the elections?
Instead of fighting for us to live better, Mickoski distracts us with the rights of EU citizens living in an EU member state. Macedonians in Bulgaria don’t vote for him.
3 The internal investigation of the Ministry or Internal Affairs found that 39 police officers failed to act on reports of domestic violence against Ivana Stojanoska, who committed suicide together with her six-year-old daughter, Katja, unable to endure years of abuse by her husband, Stojanche Jovanovski. In a separate case from a few months earlier, it’s being investigated whether 11 police officers failed to act on reports concerning Ilija Stefanoski, who killed his partner, Rosica Koceva, and her father.
Couldn’t any of those 50 police officers recognise the fear in the victims’ eyes? To make matters worse, Ivana was threatened that if she reported the abuser again, she would be prosecuted for false reporting. How many of those 50 police officers justify domestic violence? How many of those who saw Ivana being beaten in the street, in hospital, in front of the court, justify domestic violence? They’re here, among us.
This case has once again, as so often before, brought to the surface the full extent of systemic negligence, as if by definition – from A to Z. That indifference, that “it’s none of my business”, that “it’s not my responsibility”, that habit of watching from the sidelines and patronising people about how they should behave, from the police officers who told her, “Come one, make up, everything will be fine”, through social workers, to kindergartens, schools… And in the end, we leave it to social networks, where any fool can say anything, to judge and pass judgment.
Since all sorts of horrible things tend to be forgotten in our country, this trial of the wife-beater Stojanche will be forgotten as well. Just as we forgot that Rosica and her father were killed.
We’re on the verge of forgetting the 63 victims of systemic negligence in the fire at the illegal nightclub in Kocani, which happened just a year ago, let alone remembering individual victims of domestic violence.
In this normalised indifference within the system that we live with every day, the sad story of Ivana and Katja will be reduced to – just two more victims of domestic violence.
4 The Artemis 2 mission has left Earth orbit and is heading towards the Moon with four astronauts. This is the first time since 1972 that humans have travelled beyond Earth orbit.
We’re well into the third decade of the 21st century. I read the comments on social networks under the news about the mission to the Moon. People laugh and write: “From one lie to another, don’t believe it.” Or: “In which studio was it filmed? Just like in 1972.”
If you ask them why anyone would lie about humans setting off on a journey to the Moon, they have no answer. If you ask them who benefits from such a lie, they still have no answer. The rest of us, it seems, are naive and waiting in the dark for believers in conspiracy theories to enlighten us with the truth.
Let’s not forget: this is democracy. Everyone has the right to vote. And every vote carries equal weight. Anyone thinking of giving up their right to vote because, “there’s no one to vote for” should keep that in mind.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
