1 I apologise for disturbing the public, but if I may ask, what’s the amount of money we’re allowed to ask about when you’re spending taxpayers’ money? It’s time for a clear limit to be set, so that Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski would stop blaming journalists for spreading hysteria for the measly one billion and three hundred million euros. He says: “All day long there’s been hysteria around the project of one billion and three hundred million euros, a project which is to be funded by the state budget, with the support of the USA, and over here the main topic of discussion is whether someone, somewhere, in another country, has been charged with a crime.”

There you go, now we won’t be allowed to ask how they’ll spend our money because we might undermine our strategic partnership with the USA. If you speak out against the inclusion of Bulgarians in our Constitution – then you’re against the EU. When it comes to the budget money, if you ask if they’re going to spend economically on the motorways that will be built by an American-Turkish consortium, then you’re against the USA. Don’t even dare to ask about money in case you compromise our Euro-Atlantic perspective.

The reason why US Ambassador Angela Aggeler attended the signing of the contract for the construction of four motorway sections wasn’t to show support for Dimitar Kovachevski and Artan Grubi, but to support a significant American business deal. The government can’t use the photo with the US Ambassador as an alibi if they’ve messed up the choice of the supervisory company. What does the American strategic partnership have to do with the choice of the supervisory company, whose owner was accused of fraud in Armenia? At the end of the day, the US Ambassador was doing her job – promoting American business interests, a business which pays taxes to the American government and which provides her salary. We’re asking whether the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister were doing the job we’re paying them to do. Where’s the hysteria in that?

So, don’t even bother to sell journalists on your Euro-Atlantic and geostrategic stories while mocking them – ha ha, look at the silly questions they ask. There are no silly questions when it comes to money.

Besides, no one’s asking how and how much the prime minister will spend the money of his salary or his wife’s salary this weekend. No one’s asking how much Deputy Prime Minister Artan Grubi paid for designer tips so the tie and the socks he carefully picked would match. We’re asking how they’ll spend our common money. We’re talking about a billion and three hundred million euros. At the very least, because it will certainly be more. We’re talking about money that needs to be managed by an enterprise for state roads with a director of DUI, which is not capable of mowing the grass along the edges of the current motorways, collecting the rubbish or renewing the protective netting.

So, once again, I apologise to the public, if 1,3 billion euros is an insufficient amount for “spreading hysteria all day long”.

2 At the same press conference, the prime minister said that if there are suspicions about one of the owners of the company chosen to do the supervision, a criminal complaint should be filed against him and let the prosecutor’s office investigate it.

Why didn’t the Government investigate it before hiring him? Our civic obligation ends the moment we go to the polls and pay our taxes. Why would we be expected to report anything to the Prosecutor’s Office?

What are we supposed to do? We go to the Prosecutor’s Office. Good day! Good day! There are about five or six people playing football and basketball in their office, please check to make sure they’re not stealing our money.

Artan Grubi is coming up with funny gags with the DUI ministers. They were playing basketball and football in their office. Big deal. As Prime Minister Kovachevski would say, anyone can do whatever they want in their office. They were just relaxing, they’ve earned it, they work 24/7, just as Nikola Gruevski used to work. He used to relax that way as well. He played football, cycled and just like Artan he also shared videos of himself.

Several mummy’s boys from DUI playing with their balls in an office is not a big deal. It’s just a game. Taking photos of themselves while playing, that’s all right as well. However, when they saw how people were reacting, they thought it was a good idea to share a movie, to piss them off even more. Hysterical citizens, and even more hysterical journalists.

The ball is always in our court. We can do whatever we want, we hire whoever we want, we give wages to whoever we want and as much as we want, we’ll keep erecting illegal buildings and platforms by the lakes, and SDSM can’t protect you from our wasteful behaviour.

Artan himself flaunts his dribbling, dunking, nutmegging skills and wants us to know even the colour of his socks. Just don’t ask him how he spends the taxpayers’ money. Since that question could destabilize the government.

No one can touch you, Nikolaaa, Nikolaaa…

3 You see, there was no hysteria around the double murder in a café in the Skopje Old Bazaar which looked like a mafia showdown. It wasn’t surprising either that one of the victims was photographed with the president of the Assembly, Talat Xhaferi. Being “well-known to police” means he was certainly not a threat. Nor is it surprising that the murderers entered the café, shot the victims in the head, and fled the scene in a car. All of that looks like a movie, but still, it’s a predictable scenario.

The only mystery is how the victims managed to find a parking lot before they sat for a drink or two. Usually, you can’t even pass because of expensive cars parked on the pavement and the road during the day, let alone at 8 pm when people go out. The police don’t punish the illegally parked cars because the drivers are “well known”. The tow truck doesn’t go there because they’re afraid more police officers might bump themselves into it. However, it’s an even greater mystery to me how the murderers found a place to park. Either they were lucky or they turned on the hazard lights in the middle of the street – “I’d just like to ask something”, got it done and left.

Also, who is that MP Talevski who said that the double murder shouldn’t be given a political connotation? Does he live on another planet that he doesn’t know that in Macedonia politics and crime are synonyms in any connotation?

4 Over here, people can catch a break from Macedonian reality only if they read news from the rest of the world. In Japan, three people were accused of “sushi terrorism”. They spit in the plates on the conveyor belts in the restaurants.

Not only were they accused, but they also got arrested. Who knows, maybe during the trial, they’ll also admit that they licked the soy sauce bottle and dipped their chopsticks in other people’s dishes.

If their life is that boring, why don’t they come over here for a while?

 

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski