1 Not a single election since 1991 has gone by without me saying: Get out and vote! I always turn up at the polls because I don’t want to give up the only weapon I have – to punish those who waste my money and to give a chance to those I think will spend it with my needs as a citizen in mind.
The campaign for these local elections has been marked party propaganda full of poetry and empty words that have nothing to do with real local issues. I’ve heard so much meaningless hot air from the parties. Some of them were even too afraid to take part in debates. That’s all they have to say to their voters.
However, in these elections, for the first time in the history of democratic Macedonia, the parties face some serious competition – 69 independent mayoral candidates and 86 citizens’ lists for members of the municipal councils.
So, at least in these elections, we actually have a choice. If you want to vote for a party – go out and vote. If you want to vote for independent candidates – go out and vote.
The only scenario you truly don’t have a choice is if you decide not to vote.
If you don’t vote, not only do you lose the chance to change things if you’re unhappy with how your home is run, but you also lose the right to complain.
2 European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Skopje for a few hours and told Macedonia’s leaders the same thing the few EU officials who meet with President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova and Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski tell them: “You need to make the agreed constitutional change. The ball is in your court. The EU is ready.”
A condition for starting negotiations with the EU is the inclusion of Bulgarians as a minority in the Macedonian Constitution. Both President Siljanovska-Davkova and Prime Minister Mickoski won last year’s elections on the promise that they would renegotiate the notorious French proposal imposing that condition. As if these negotiations were with Maksim Dimitrievski from ZNAM and Izet Mexhiti from the VLEN coalition, some kind of “I’ll take this, you take that” deal over a director’s post or a seat on a board, rather than negotiations with the EU itself. What domestic capacity do they rely on in negotiations with 27 serious countries?
President Siljanovska-Davkova asked von der Leyen, “for the EU to find a creative solution to unblock Macedonia’s integration” and welcomed “the initiative to reform the EU by introducing qualified majority voting.” Meanwhile, Prime Minister Mickoski told the President of the European Commission that he “expects concrete commitment from the EU, as confirmation of the European perspective and support for the citizens who have remained devoted to European values for decades.”
We must be pretty cool if we’re in a position to set conditions for the EU before negotiations even begin. And if they can’t meet the conditions we’re setting, we’ll wait for them to reform.
That’s not even worthy of pub talk.
Ever since the French proposal was signed, I’ve hated the idea that we must make that concession and include Bulgarians in our Constitution on the road to the EU. Considering all the hostile acts towards the Macedonian people, not only against the generation of my ancestors, but now against my children, whose European future is at risk, I can’t trust their homeland.
But it is what it is. The damage has been done. So, regardless if those who signed the agreement were patriots or traitors, the country has taken on an obligation that must be fulfilled. If it wants to start the EU negotiations at all. And then, one fine day, when all 27 member states, assuming that number doesn’t grow in the meantime, will vote to accept us into the family.
For a year and a half, this government has still not told us what its plan is if we don’t start the EU negotiations soon. Anything else is just fooling people by quasi-patriotic chest-beating, while the country empties out en masse. While parties wave the Kutlesh flag, people are finding their own way to the EU, humiliating themselves by applying for Bulgarian passports.
Unfortunately, there’s no other solution. Well, actually, there is. The other solution is: ditch the EU.
Either take your shot, or leave the game.
3 After all, didn’t this ruling setup promise that if it failed to bring Macedonia into the EU, it would bring the EU into Macedonia?
The EU is almost here. Sooner rather than later, half of their mandate will have passed, and we’re still waiting. How much longer will the government under VMRO-DPMNE, ZNAM and VLEN keep dwelling on the mistakes of SDSM and DUI?
One of their main promises was the fight corruption. Yet, the instigator of high-level corruption is the law that reduced penalties and allowed the statute of limitations for corruption-related crimes among high-ranking officials to expire faster. That law was passed by the SDSM and DUI MPs before they fell from power, after the VMRO-DPMNE MPs provided them with a quorum.
If the fight against corruption really is their priority, what stopped VMRO-DPMNE, VLEN and ZNAM from changing SDSM and DUI’s flawed law and reinstating the old penalties over the past 14 months? Even SDSM would have supported them, since their leader, Venko Filipche, admitted his party had made a mistake. Surely, in order to do that, the parliamentary majority didn’t need to wait for the local elections, and then, only afterwards, for the prime minister to reset the system. And that reset implies declaring “the end” of the prosecutors and judges who investigated his party’s crimes.
In fact, even after 30 years on the road to the EU, we’re still neither here nor there. And it’ll stay that way for as long as it suits the government, no matter who happens to be in power.
And what suits this government is to keep the ball in its own court for as long as possible.
What a shot on goal… aaaaaand… it’s off target.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
