1 Skopje has been left without public transport for the first time in its history, and judging by the way things unfold, it may remain without water as well. The President of the Syndicate, Darko Dimovski, has threatened: “Do not allow yourselves to get into a position where, besides public transport, you won’t have any drinking water too”. I wouldn’t take that threat as lightly as many people did – “yeah right, as if they’ll cut off our water”. When it comes to the “For modern Skopje” coalition of Danela Arsovska and VMRO-DPMNE, it’s not unlikely that the modern capital, for which they were promising free transport but was left without any transport at all, to suddenly be left without water supply as well. In fact, the breaking point came over the PE “Water Supply and Sewerage” and the accusations over who took a bigger slice of the cake and who tried to benefit from the 136 million euros tender for the sewage treatment plant.
And while VMRO-DPMNE and Danela Arsovka don’t even hide the fact that they’re arguing over money, Skopje is falling apart. Exactly how brutal this fight for money is can be further seen in the fact that the mayor, whose job is to ensure smooth traffic and free movement of the citizens, has blocked her own city. She’s left the JSP buses on “Ilindenska” in front of the Government to block the traffic even though the City Council had found money for the striking drivers a day before.
The management of the City of Skopje has blocked the City of Skopje! It has nothing to do with common sense.
Now, we can expect a competition from the “For modern Skopje” coalition between the mayor and VMRO-DPMNE over which public enterprise will endanger the city more. It doesn’t have to be the shortage of water. They can choose not to collect the rubbish from the bins. Fire-fighters, just as the JSP drivers, may say: let there be fires, we won’t go and put them out. Let Danela park the fire engines in front of the Government. Let it burn! VMRO-DPMNE and Danela shall play a game of “Piccolomini for modern Skopje”.
Let SDSM watch and poke fun. And let them complain to VMRO-DPMNE. God forbid they try to unblock something or complete some task. And let them gloat at the citizens of Skopje for voting for Danela – there you go, apparently Petre wasn’t good enough for you. Because that’s the most important thing.
But the gloating is becoming unbearable.
2 And while the traffic in Skopje came to a standstill, the city was blocked, and JSP drivers were asking for salaries, at the Council of the City of Skopje, the councillors from VMRO-DPMNE and SDSM and Mayor Arsovska were debating for five hours straight over the “Mayor in the front lines”, the “bigger slice of the cake”, “who has been more incapable and who has stolen more” and over how the chairman, Trajko Slaveski, had asked for an official car with a driver and the latest iPhone. In the midst of this quarrel, we saw the way the mayor has been managing the crisis. Instead of negotiating with the unionists and looking for money to provide salaries, with so many crises pilling up and the city falling apart, it turns out she was looking for a way to turn off the button Council Chairman Trajko Slaveski was using to turn off her microphone while she was speaking at the podium. And she succeeded in her efforts. Trajko’s button was indeed off. But he proved to be a resourceful man as well. He took her microphone away. Snap!
Do you think that, that day, someone from the Council of the City of Skopje was thinking about the citizens who lost their daily wages because they couldn’t get to work, of the pupils and the students who couldn’t make it to their lectures, or the sick people who had their check-ups scheduled?
Of course not. We saw how much they care about the citizens when the drama that started with a threat that there was a bomb in the city buses eventually ended up with turning off a microphone-regulating button.
This reminded me of that old Bulgarian joke about the first Bulgarian astronaut who was sent to space together with the Laika, the dog. When he asked what he needed to do, he was simply told: you just feed the dog and don’t touch the buttons.
This is what the “For modern Skopje” coalition of VMRO-DPMNE and Danela Arsovska has come down to. Feed the dogs. Give them access to money. And don’t touch the buttons.
3 I’d really like to know what criteria were used by the public administration office when they hired the official who put the wrong flag in the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bujar Osmani, so instead of the Slovenian flag, for the visit of the Slovenian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tanja Fajon, they put the Slovakian one. I would really like to know if the Minister has punished the official who had put the wrong flag. I don’t think so. Have you ever heard of someone from the public administration being punished for what they did? Does anyone dare cut their salary, as is the case with employees in the private sector? Their salaries mustn’t be late more than 5 days – if they are, they immediately take to the streets, strike and block the city.
What merit system was used when they joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? The kind of merit system that only applies to the public administration. Moreover, that merit system is flexible if you get the job in accordance with the tool for equitable ethnic representation. Big deal, so what if they put the wrong flag, at least Bujar knew which minister he was meeting. Truth be told, they got the correct flag twice – the one from the press conference hall and the one from the meeting hall. They only managed to get the one from the Minister’s office wrong. It’s not like everyone attended their geography lessons. However, these people obviously have never even read those children magazines and have never solved those “Spot the difference in the pictures” tasks.
I’m pretty sure that the people from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have complained among themselves over coffee about how difficult and responsible their job is. “My God, tomorrow will be a mess. We have so much work to do, so, so much, I can’t even get my head around it… God, we’ll have to work overtime. Some minister is coming, we’ll be extremely busy. Slovakia, Slovenia, same thing. Just like Iran and Iraq. Or Austria and Australia. Or Sweden and Switzerland”.
4Not everything is as hopeless when it comes to our ultimate goal – membership in the European Union. You only need to follow the Facebook profile of Bojan Maricic, the Vice Prime Minister for European integration: “Onwards with our informative screening meeting. Onwards with the reforms throughout different chapters. As a Government which is dedicated to creating a favourable and attractive business climate for investments and doing business, we have developed several strategic frameworks”.
But, that’s not all. The people of Skopje got their district heating. The Government is getting wins in all fields.
I only regret that, in all of this tsunami of successes, the news that the “hot meals are back on the menu at MEC Bitola, the canteen will work again” went unnoticed.
MEC was built in 1980 and began producing electricity in 1982. There hasn’t been a single investment in the energy sector as significant as MEC ever since our independence, yet the Government has boasted that they have reopened the canteen which has been there all this time.
My God, we’ve come a long way. After 31 years of being an independent state, we’re not capable of even reheating the stew that Tito had cooked for us.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
