SAY THANK YOU

by | 22 October, 2021

You deny citizens the quality of life; citizens deny you the votes.

1 Woah, the evil will happen again!? Well, has it just occurred to you? The citizens who brought you to power have been working you for four years: Be careful, the evil will happen again. And you kept saying to them: Don’t stress yourself so much. We all knew that VMRO-DPMNE was going to return if SDSM didn’t do their job well. And what did you, people in SDSM, do to prevent that evil from happening again?

And now, citizens should be afraid that the criminal party which stole everything – starting from the elections and then everything all the way down the line and whose leadership didn’t even apologize for the wrongdoings of the fugitive in Budapest, for the organized attack on the Assembly, for the mass wiretapping, for making us live in fear, for the racketeering, for ruining media outlets, for the fact the state was kidnapped by one party… What has the ruling SDSM done to show they’re afraid of VMRO returning? It’s not like their rule was a fight against the evil. Especially not on the municipal level, where people assess concrete effects.

When I look back on the brutal pressure we people in media had to endure, I don’t even want to know of that VMRO. Am I now to compare SDSM with VMRO?Zaev promised to start thoroughly cleaning the system even after the first round of the presidential elections in the spring of 2019, when Stevo Pendarovski won just 4,000 votes more than Gordana Siljanovska – Davkova, when the actor Dragan Spasov – Dac gave him a broom as a gift. So, it’s not like voters hadn’t warned him. However, he used the broom just to kick up a dust. He didn’t want to spoil things for his fellow party members with all their business, family and other private interests.

Then – people went to the polls and did some sweeping. Some of them took revenge for the local government’s arrogance, for the incompetent director appointed by the party who’s been complicating their life, for all the garbage that’s not collected, others for the lack of parking lots, for the overcrowded classrooms their children study in, yet others for the buildings sprouting up in their neighbourhood and the balconies overlooking their own balconies. Each one of them with problems the government had no understanding of. Because the government was thinking only about their members.
Do they still not understand that we no longer have the patience to tolerate someone’s rule just for the interests of the party? We’re tired of it. Resigned. When Zaev used to say “let’s not allow this evil to happen again” after each new published information bomb, we really believed that the evil wouldn’t happen again. The people who didn’t go to the polls now, voted 4 years ago, hoping for change. Now the two largest parties are in decline. At these elections, VMRO-DPMNE got 50,000 votes less than at the municipal elections in 2017. Whereas SDSM lost about 180,000 voters. In fact, the biggest defeat of SDSM is that they’ve killed our hope.

2 Instead of saying “Hold on, Micko,” Zaev should have sometimes said “Hold on…” to the construction companies which attacked all the locations they had set their sights on. But what he used to say to the local authorities was: ”No isn’t an option, it has to be Yes.” So, the authorities voted for the plans according to their wishes, not according to the wishes of the citizens dreaming for a quality life. Construction companies are so rude that they didn’t stop usurping the public space even during the campaign. The government winks at them, the prosecutor’s office has been conducting preliminary investigations for years, and the desperate citizens are left with no choice but to take the broom in their own hands. At the elections.

Zaev should stop wondering why he lost so many votes, even in the places where SDSM traditionally used to win. There isn’t much to philosophize about here. You deny citizens the quality of life; citizens deny you the votes.

3 I don’t want to jinx things, maybe it’s too early to speak of a new hope given the success of the independent groups of voters who won about sixty seats in the Municipal Councils. 65,000 people voted for them. They’ll be the deciding factor for the majority in a dozen municipalities. They’ve achieved this success without money, without expensive campaigns, without TV commercials, without organizational structure. Those people didn’t offer employment and membership in managing boards. They offered ideas on how to protect citizens’ interests by recognizing local problems.

Their 65,000 votes and 60,000 invalid ballots show that citizens shudder when a party is mentioned and they’re sick and tired of the parties meddling with every single thing. However, I’m not sure SDSM and VMRO-DPMNE are ready to give up their policy of cultivating party clients that will be the power source of their votes. I’m convinced that instead of welcoming them, they will try to suppress them. Just like when they tried to stop them before the elections, when they wanted to raise the threshold of collected signatures.

4 We’re in the middle of a global crisis, everything is getting more and more expensive, Covid is still filling hospitals and cemeteries, things will be even worse from January, and over here the government and the opposition are sizing each other up with the idea of early elections.

Do we have the right to live without elections for at least a year? Plus, it’s not just the elections. As if it’s not enough that we got to witness Mickoski lecture us about concrete jungles and about the “mafia in power” and to see him meet Zijadin Sela at the crime scene in the Assembly, so we now have to take interest in their leadership meetings in the Club of MPs, then the election of the Przino Government, then this minister isn’t on good terms with his deputy, then that other guy isn’t on good terms with the prime minister, so ministers and deputy ministers in the Ministry of Internal Affairs will be fired, the ministers of finance and the ministers of labour and social policy will try to prove they are the competent authority…And on top of that, there should be an Albanian prime minister six months before the elections. “Pse jo – (Why not)” was Ahmeti’s idea, wasn’t it…

The municipal elections showed that at least 120,000 voters can’t stomach any of that.
What’s so scary about losing the municipal elections in a democratic state? Does everything have to be so dramatic that people would be like “bring down Shilegov, bring down the Government,” or so historically important that the future of the country would depend on the change of local authorities. Zaev’s logic is flawed. If the Government is brought down because Skopje was brought down, does that mean that SDSM won’t participate in the potential early parliamentary elections? Since, it’s certain that there can be no early municipal elections. No matter if he is or isn’t the prime minister and whether he decided to harass us with early elections or not, the VMRO local government will certainly remain in power for the next four years.

Zaev has to deliver on a lot of projects he’s promised to complete and that’s the reason he won the trust at the elections last year. He can’t run away after just one year because he doesn’t like the numbers. He has almost three more years until the end of his term – let him consolidate his position. And let him say thank you to the voters for opening his eyes.

Not to mention that we need to see how these new VMRO employees will rule in the municipalities where they’ve won. Let them take out the lists for replacements in kindergartens and schools. Let them appoint new directors in the utility companies. Let them use only their own municipal funds to pave everything they’ve promised. Let them create “new future” by erasing “North” from the boards and by removing the Albanian language. And if Danela does win, let’s see how she’ll buy the 250 buses for free public transport in Skopje. She’ll bring gas too. The only thing is that Gruevski hasn’t returned yet to approve her money from the state budget. And Mile is still under house arrest, so he can’t drive all over Skopje as he used to with the Chinese double-deckers, which are not falling apart.

At the end of the day, let’s see if the evil is really happening again, because they’re already taking out their lists of nonconformists who will face the firing squad.

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski