1 Why would Zaev go to Bulgaria, when the day before, he was told from Sofia they had no intention to lift the veto on the start of Macedonia’s accession talks with the EU? He was told “don’t come,” but he felt compelled to set out early in the morning to go watch football with Bulgarian Prime Minister Stefan Janev. Apparently, they’d cheer for Macedonia, although 70 percent of the population there says they don’t want to see us and that they support the veto. Besides being really, really polite, he even gave them suggestions on how to resolve the dispute in which their demands make no sense whatsoever. He just legitimizes their nonsense.
At least with the Greeks with knew how things stood. They didn’t shower us with hypocritical sweet talk like “closest friends”, “brothers, sisters,” as Boyko Borisov puts it. What do they think of us? He’s the one who put the veto. He’s the one who allowed Ekaterina Zaharieva and Krasimir Karakachanov to get their kicks by abusing us. He created a problem, and he’s now bragging that he’ll solve it. He and Zaev agreed that it’d be a sin to allow people on both sides of the border to hate each other.
And things were going just fine until about three or four years ago. With the veto, Bulgaria created a fourth generation of hatred.
My grandparents were born in the late 19th century and the early 20th century. They remembered the Balkan Wars and the First World War. They didn’t have fond memories of the Bulgarian army.
My parents were born in the 20s and 30s of the 20th century. Both of them come from partisan families who fought against the Bulgarian fascist occupier. If the then administration had been so good for them, they wouldn’t have been crazy to go die trying to change it.
I remember Bulgaria from the time of the Cold War. I’ll refrain from comments about the things I remember it for. But to this day I still carry with me the traumas of Deve Bair, as the darkest and the most unpleasant border crossing of my travels at that time. And even now it’s not really pleasant.
However, my children have nothing to do with that. A little bit of weekending in Bansko, a little bit of skiing in Borovec, a similar language, they understand some words, some they don’t, same food, same mentality, same customs… They don’t really care about the stories recounted by their grandmothers about the prison in Bitola during the Bulgarian administration and about what the partisan detachments had to go through in Debarca. They live their life. As for the border – it is as it is.
And – what happened? Bulgaria denied my children their European future. They’re in the middle of Europe, but there are no pre-accession grants for them, no European education, no socialization with other children from Europe, they can’t freely cross borders… Why? Isn’t it true that in the EU, you’re free to say that you feel like a girl if you’re a boy? Then, why aren’t my children allowed to say they’re Macedonian in the same EU, just because Bulgarian European politicians ask them to say that their ancestors were Bulgarian? And why does said European Union, which prides itself on the right to self-determination and diversity, accept that? Because when it comes to Bulgarian children, when they got admitted to the EU in 2007, their country had met all the conditions they’re imposing on us now? It’s not like they got admitted because someone stretched the rules for them, when the EU and the USA were in a hurry to reach the Black Sea before Russia tried to get its hands on it. And now that gives European Bulgaria the right to get their kicks by abusing Macedonia.
Ok. We have to learn to live with that realization. You can’t just force things to happen. Nothing will come out of Deve Bair. That’s the subtitle I put on this column as early as in 1992, 3 October. Almost thirty years later, still nothing good comes out of Deve Bair. And I don’t even hope anything ever will, no matter what Zaev has suggested.
2 The whole day Prime Minister Zaev spent in Sofia was a waste of time. Instead, he was supposed to settle things down at home and tell off his fellow party members. And he should stop making excuses for them when they mess up.
Imagine how embarrassing it is for the country to admit we’re out of passports and to inform all other countries that Macedonian citizens will travel on an expired passport.
Passports are not the only thing we’re out of, because we’ve been out of license plates for three months. We’re also out of plastic for driver’s licenses. They issue drivers sheets of paper. Plus, we’re out of report cards for the students. They can be given their grades written on napkins.
As for the license plates – you’d think to yourself, maybe they couldn’t predict how many new cars would be bought. But don’t they know how many children there are in our schools? Who messed up? A clerk who had a child under the age of seven, so because of the Covid she spent the whole year sitting at home on a state salary? Or perhaps a colleague of hers who had stents put in 10 years ago, so he spent the whole year at home as well. And they’re now using their paid holiday and are waiting for the annual leave allowance.
Imagine if you went to a normal country where people have valid identity documents and showed up at the border and a zealous official saw that you got there with an expired passport, without a license plate on your car and without a driver’s license. And if you tried to convince him that in your country that’s normal. What would he think? That he’s being pranked on candid camera?
And what sort of diplomacy would take you out of a room for criminals at a border crossing, when half of the officials don’t pick up the phone, and half of them are on a holiday.
I think it’d be best to travel with our old health booklets until they manage to get the tenders to be “it’s all according to the law, boss.” So instead of stamping our passports, they’d give us a diagnosis. That way we’d have a document similar to the digital Covid passport. A one-stop shop and – all in one. Not only would you get a diagnosis for setting out like that, the country would also get a diagnosis for sending you that way.
3 Do they think voters are so stupid when they’re trying to sell them on the story about the rejection of elaborations of Municipality Centar, that they can’t change the urban plan, so yet again according to the principle “it’s all according to the law, boss,” they’ll have to allow the construction of twenty-storey buildings at the Holiday Inn Hotel? Apparently, the Municipality couldn’t prove they’re contrary to the public interest.
It’s a matter of: “Mile, I’ve got an idea! What if we mess up the elaborations? No, no. Even if they don’t make a mistake, we’ll tell them they’ve messed them up.” Who says that? The Ministry of Transport and Communications, which sold the state-owned land at Holiday Inn almost for free, and will now assess whether it’s a good idea to build at Holiday Inn. They’re judge and jury in their own case.
SDSM have been in power for four years in most municipalities and for five years in power at the state level. If they had wanted to change something in the plans of VMRO-DPMNE, which they criticized and by doing so tricked the voters to vote for them, they would have done it. On top of that they’re even carrying out the plans of VMRO-DPMNE.
I am really interested in what slogan they’ll use in the local elections? We are not competent! We are not powerful!
4 The firefighters from Skopje trained a lot. First they trained for the final rehearsal, and then they had a final rehearsal to train in front of the mayor Petre Shilegov and the ministers Oliver Spasovski and Venko Filipce.
If, God forbid, there is a fire, firefighters will have to put it out on the 11th floor. Ambulances will also arrive on time. But will they be able to approach the site because of all those parked cars in the narrow streets of the urban chaos that they left and upgraded?
Have you prepared an elaboration of that?
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
