1 That’s what our state is. A large illegal construction without a permit. And the worst thing is that it doesn’t bother anyone. Even if it did, who would we complain to, since even the ones we pay to be bothered by it, aren’t.
This was the subtitle of a column I published three years ago, on April 15, 2022. The occasion was the murder of Croatian handball player Denis Tot, in front of a nightclub operating without a permit.
Back then, there was one victim outside a nightclub that wasn’t allowed to operate in Skopje. Three years later, there are 62 victims in a nightclub that wasn’t allowed to operate in Kochani.
Allow me to use one more quote from the same column published three years ago: “Does anyone seriously believe that the cause of the fire at the site of the former “Treska” furniture factory, in Skopje’s Centar Municipality, will ever be revealed? Does anyone believe there’ll be an investigation into the cause of the fire? Even if there is an investigation, even if some banal reason is discovered, does anyone believe that wasn’t a case of arson to lower the market value of the plots where buildings are to be built?”
And now, as if we’re all suffering from collective amnesia, former Minister of Transport and Communications, Blagoj Bochvarski, appears on television to discuss the investigation into the tragedy in Kochani and calls for the resignation of the Minister of Internal Affairs, Panche Toshkovski. Other SDSM MPs have also found something to say about Kochani.
The best thing Bochvarski and the rest from SDSM, at least those whose names we still remember as officials, could do is keep quiet. Not a word. And if they really feel the urge to speak, let it be to apologise. An apology for all the wrongdoings they committed, for selling off state land and merging plots to enable urban and architectural rape across the country, for their silence, for turning a blind eye to that rape, and the impunity they granted to the bullies. An apology for lying to us that they’d stop VMRO-DPMNE’s urban rampage, that they’d punish the thugs, and undo the damage, only to strike even harder themselves and encourage the same thuggish behaviour.
What SDSM and DUI are saying now is completely irrelevant, because at this point we’re witnessing the consequences of everything they did, or failed to do, while in power. Every move they made was designed to make life easier for the crooks and rapists, and harder for the citizens. From the open-air seating areas they have fenced off and usurped pavements and parks, to the monstrosities that will suffocate Skopje near the Holiday Inn and the old train station, the apartment blocks at the sites of the former “Treska” and “Alumina” factories, the complex around the “8 September” hospital, the destruction of all low-rise neighbourhoods with small 20-apartment buildings with no parking lots and garages, the sheer greed that didn’t leave a strip of pavement for their own children to safely walk to school, all the way to the desecration of Ohrid and Struga along the entire coastline, defying UNESCO, the Matka protected zone, the concreting of the Mavrovo National Park, the illegal construction on Mount Shara…
As Zaev said in Ohrid back in 2019 – It can’t be a “No,” they’ll find a way to make it a “Yes!” And he went on to confirm the urban planning norms that are valid to this day.
Well, there you have it. “Yes” came to be with 62 victims. And with Kochani – an entire city shrouded in grief.
2 It’s not as if we stayed silent or didn’t point things out. My column remembers, too. My colleagues have received countless journalistic awards precisely for reporting on illegal construction and corruption. Citizens organised countless protests. All in vain. They’d simply wait for the topic to die down and carry on as before.
I find it a little illogical that former Minister of Economy Kreshnik Bekteshi’s detention has been extended because he supposedly knew, from his position in Skopje, what was happening in Kochani, while the Mayor of Kochani, Ljupcho Papazov, is under house arrest because he didn’t know what was happening in his own town. But, on the other hand, I find it completely logical that the investigation is reaching back to 2012 when the nightclub began operating in a building that had previously been registered as a carpet warehouse. If nothing else, perhaps the fact that former ministers, mayors, directors, inspectors, civil servants, and police officers are now under investigation will serve as a warning to those currently in office that even after 10 or 12 years, they too could end up in prison if they continue tolerating the bullies, even if they’re no longer working hand-in-hand with them.
Even now, while the investigation is ongoing in Kochani and inspections are being carried out intensively, new illegal seating areas are popping up, extra floors are being added, eaves are being fenced off, permits for activity conversions are being issued, and businesses are opening in buildings that haven’t passed technical inspection and lack property certificates…
In fact, it’s not just about building permits and utility fees that feed the municipal administration. What about the streets that the new tenants and guests will drive on? What about parking lots? Schools? Kindergartens? Polyclinics? What about access to buildings and shops? We gave up on asking for parks a long time ago, but let’s at least hope to make it alive. Not even an ambulance will save you if you fall ill, nor will the fire brigade be able to put out a fire.
That’s what bugs me. That these 62 victims will be in vain. That a major trial for the tragedy Kochani will begin, only to be watered down and dragged out for years. That everything will stay as it was.
3 A 57-year-old patient has died because doctors at the state-run Cardiac Surgery Clinic were unable to perform an emergency operation.
Minister of Health Arben Taravari says the doctors decided not to operate. And why? Because they had neither the means nor the place to do it. The operating theatre isn’t functional due to ongoing renovations and they didn’t have the necessary stents.
So, if your aorta ruptures right now and you’re taken to the state-run Cardiac Surgery Clinic, the doctor, whose salary you pay through monthly health contributions taken from every paycheck, will tell you he can’t help you because the state hasn’t provided him with an operating theatre or materials needed to do his job.
Isn’t that a state-sponsored murder?
If the state Cardiac Surgery Clinic doesn’t have an operating theatre, and doesn’t have stents, then why not just turn this strategically important institution into a rehabilitation centre? If the state Cardiac Surgery Clinic can’t save you when you’re in a life-threatening condition, then who can?
The deaths of 62 young people in Kochani, 6 of whom are children, were murders caused by corruption. But isn’t the murder of this 57-year-old man from Skopje also a result of corruption and likely not the only victim of our state healthcare system? Since even in a life-threatening condition they don’t admit you to a state hospital, and instead tell you that your only chance of survival is to go to a private cardiac surgery centre and pay 1,000 euros for a single night in intensive care, what’s the point of discussing other health conditions that aren’t life-threatening, but still matter when it comes to living well. There are no medicines, there are no materials, the mammogram isn’t working, the computer isn’t working, the operating theatre isn’t working, there are no X-ray films, the elevators aren’t working, the tender has been cancelled…
Finally, let’s ask ourselves the following question out loud:
Is the government, by denying you treatment in state-run public health facilities, enabling private hospitals to get rich?
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
