1 Try to put the words “DUI”, “nice” and “country” in the same sentence. When you hear the announcement that the leader of DUI Ali Ahmeti will say something good for the country on Saturday, and goes on to add that the proposal will stir up the public, I’d be more afraid than happy.

What kind of an announcement made by DUI could be good for the country? Perhaps the illegally built platforms at Matka will be removed on Saturday? Or Ali Ahmeti will be photographed in front of the Macedonian flag? He’ll tell us the news in Macedonian? Or perhaps not a single reed will be burnt in Struga? Or they’ll fix the water supply in the higher parts of Tetovo? Or the tow trucks will remove cars in Chair and Bit Pazar in Skopje, without the danger of police officers injuring themselves? Or DUI will change the mayor of Arachinovo, who is a member of SDSM, and will make a register, so the citizens of that municipality would finally start paying property taxes?

Apparently Zaev too liked what Ahmeti has to announce. But he told us to wait and said “we shouldn’t add whipped cream and a cherry and make a cake out of it.” So, those two don’t only share tenders. They share secrets too.

It’s as if those two have graduated at the same drama school of Artan Grubi. Although, the previous plays which were suspenseful to the very end didn’t do any good to the Albanians, yet alone the Macedonians. The phrase “nice for Macedonia” in the same sentence with DUI, doesn’t quite ring true.

2 The good news on Saturday is that at the end of the third wave of the Covid pandemic weddings can be organized. With special safety protocols that even hospitals can’t follow.

The protocols haven’t taken into account the fact that one goes to a wedding to be an active participant. You don’t go there to watch a play of the bride and groom dancing. The way they’ve conceived the event, it’s as if you’re going to watch the The Marriage of Figaro and take a nap during the intermission.

Everything is worked out to the smallest detail. The guest list, the Covid manager, measuring temperature, going to the toilet with a mask on, the band has to stand 5 meters away from the guests and isn’t allowed to go near the tables, it’s forbidden to hug or kiss, only the bride and groom can dance together, everyone else will be a leader of their own chain dance… Imagine if someone watched that spectacle from the side – 100 people have got together and everyone’s dancing in their 4 square meters.

But still, the Infectious Diseases Commission forgot the most important detail. At weddings, people drink alcohol. And alcohol leads to poor concentration on distancing.

As a matter of fact, even if they limited the consumption of alcohol, what would still remain is the danger of losing concentration and crossing over to the other’s 4 square meters to dance. Because, there has to be a hand sanitizer on every table. Where there’s a sanitizer, there’s water too. Spritzer according to protocol. In the case of dire need, of course.

3 What still continues is the play with a suspenseful end to the very end performed by Bulgaria for the start of the accession talks of Macedonia with the EU. Zoran Zaev stated he was ready to beg Sofia to lift the veto, while Bulgarian President Rumen Radev said that Bulgaria would seek guarantees from the EU for Macedonia.

What kind of guarantees will Bulgaria seek from the EU? That by the end of the negotiations, when we’ll be supposed to join the EU, Macedonians will have become Bulgarians? How can the tiny Macedonia, which is not a member country of the EU, endanger Bulgaria, which is equal to the other 26 countries that make up the most powerful alliance in Europe? We can’t endanger them even in terms of the level of corruption. They’re bigger, richer and have a longer tradition of corrupt practices.

Now, when the USA blacklisted several Bulgarian businessmen over government-related corruption and reprimanded the EU member state Bulgaria for a lack of effort to deal with grand corruption, the Macedonian is once again faced with a historic dilemma: To become Bulgarian and risk being blacklisted by the USA, or to patiently wait for a date to start the accession talks with the EU?

4 Zaev is begging, but Venko is begging too. Zaev is begging in Sofia for a date, while Venko is begging Belgrade for vaccines. He asked the Serbian Minister of Health Zlatibor Lonchar if Macedonian citizens who received the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine in Serbia, could take the second dose closer, in Nish or Vranje.

I bet you won’t find another country as concerned for its citizens than ours anywhere in the world. The Macedonian minister begs the Serbian minister to enable people who have Macedonian health insurance and who pay the Macedonian state for that health insurance, not to drive all the way to Belgrade, and get vaccinated closer to the border instead. The Serbian minister says that he’ll consider helping the Macedonian insured people.  And the Macedonian minister presents that as his success and as a confirmation of his care for his fellow citizens.

It’s not like all those citizens who decided to go to Serbia to get vaccinated in March waited for the Covid problem to be solved by the Macedonian state. If Venko really doesn’t want to complicate their life, because if nothing else they increased the percentage of vaccinated people over here and they saved on the cost of vaccines, let him at least work with the Minister of Internal Affairs Oliver Spasovski, to ensure to mitigate congestion at the Tabanovtse border crossing that weekend, unlike the last weekend of March. And if possible, at least that weekend the Ministry of Internal Affairs shouldn’t justify themselves that it’s normal for the computer system to crash once in a while. So people wouldn’t think that the Government is punishing them for getting vaccinated abroad, after the state failed to provide them with vaccines at home.

5 In the “It’s all according to the law, boss” section, this week the focus is on:”Decision for non-implementation of the strategic environmental assessment when adopting a Detailed Urban Plan.”

Since in itself, to pass a decision to not implement something that you need to implement, is absurd, I tried to understand what it actually means. Just above the Institute of Respiratory Diseases in Children in Kozle, Skopje, on the slopes of Vodno, in a green belt, a new residential area will be built. Karpos Municipality makes that possible by referring to the Decision for non-implementation of the strategic assessment from 2015. You remember that SDSM used to accuse the mayor Stevcho Jakimovski of lack of transparency and of changing the plans overnight so they could then be passed by the councilors.

Now, SDSM is in power and the distribution of power in the Council is different. But both then and now, it’s obvious that the councilors don’t mind passing a decision for non-implementation of an environmental assessment.

In practice that means that: We have European legislature for environmental protection. That means that we’re working according to the law. However, if need be, we pass decisions to not implement a law. And that too is – according to the law.

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski