1 Do political parties underestimate voters that much, or do voters underestimate themselves when, during election campaigns, they fall for T-shirts, caps, and notebooks handed out in some bags by ministers, high-ranking officials of the ruling party, and opposition representatives alike?
Those gifts were bought with our money, weren’t they? That’s money from the state budget the parties receive for elections, funds we’ve provided for them through our taxes and contributions. In other words, they’re giving us gifts we’ve bought ourselves. We paid for them, and probably overpaid. Who knows how much political profit someone’s made by stuffing those bags with pens and lighters?
Independent candidate for mayor of Bitola, Gabriela Ilievska, says that “they can’t keep fooling us with pens and lighters.”
You don’t say. I’d call it a case of double self-deception. The political parties lie that they’re giving us something. And when we receive the bag of trifles, we lie to ourselves that we’ve actually taken something. If nothing else, at least we’ll add to our collection of pens from previous elections.
Still, I think that by 2025 citizens are well aware the parties are lying to them. Yet that doesn’t stop them from accepting their gifts. It’s an “anything will do” sort of situation. Since you haven’t filled the potholes on my street and haven’t collected my rubbish, at least you’ve bought me a pen and a notebook with my own money.
The party-branded bag is the only tangible, concrete thing we’ll get in these elections for our money.
2 Carried away by the pens and lighters, we have forgotten what these same mayors promised us back in 2021 and what their leaders promised only fifteen months ago. We voted just last year, didn’t we? Do they really have anything new to say? They’ve recorded a new promo video? They’ve printed a new billboard?
Have they even finished the projects they promised us four years ago, that they’re already promising new ones?
For example, in the last 30 years we’ve had a multi-party system, has there ever been a candidate for mayor of Skopje who hasn’t promised to restore the splendour of Skopje’s Old Bazaar? And with every election, the Bazaar not only loses its splendour but also its authenticity. At this point, I’m convinced that come 2029, the candidates for mayor of Skopje will still be promising to restore the splendour of the Old Bazaar.
Election campaigns feel as if parties are on autopilot. Fill the buses, take the same people for a trip, hand out flags to wave and applaud, hand out sandwiches and pens, and promise parks, kindergartens, benches, swimming pools, bike lanes… There isn’t even space left to build all the parks they’ve promised. They promised them at the last elections too, but in the meantime, blocks of flats have sprung up instead. They promised kindergartens as well, but in the meantime the parents of those unborn children have moved abroad.
Just try listening to what they’re promising this time, but don’t look at who’s speaking. It will seem like you’re listening to one long advert from the same party.
How is it that, when their election promises differ only in nuance, so much hatred has erupted? We’re heading to local elections, yet they’re talking in terms of life and death, shooting at each other in the streets, fighting in parking lots, and one candidate for councillor in Vinica, from the same coalition list, even had his head smashed in.
It’s absolutely unbelievable how much they hate each other during the pre-election period, only to make up the moment they sit together in the municipal councils. As soon as they start sharing the election spoils, they forget everything they’d promised for the common good.
3 Brain cancer patients wait for two months for their MRI results at the state Radiology Clinic.
Oncology patients sometimes receive therapy, and then next moment they don’t. The same sad stories repeat themselves: there’s medicine, then there isn’t, the tender’s been announced, then tender hasn’t been finalised, the deadline for complaints is running, there’s a replacement, there isn’t…
Why is everything still the same? Didn’t they promise changes? Where are the changes? We thought that when they promised changes, they actually knew how to deliver them. 15 months have passed. These elections will pass too. Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski says that once the results of the local elections are in, he may consider calling early Parliamentary elections. And you know what that means, more pens, more notebooks, T-shirts, caps, and tens of millions of euros wasted on empty words. On top of that, even more time wasted, instead of at least trying to mend this shattered country.
Let ministers and the directors of public institutions take a walk through the hospitals. But not among doctors who applaud some mayoral candidate during working hours for having a retaining wall behind the Clinical Centre repaired, but among the patients waiting in the corridors. Let them ask whether they feel like getting a pen and a lighter. Instead of bags, let them hand out vouchers with appointment times.
4 Let’s make a bet right now: Will Danela Arsovska turn up for the inauguration when the new mayor of Skopje is elected?
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
