1 The Health Insurance Fund has announced that, in future, GPs will only be able to issue sick leave for a maximum of five days and that, to prevent abuse, inspectors, acting either at random or following a report from an employer, will be able to turn up at someone’s door to check if the insured person is actually at home.
They don’t need to go far. They should start by checking patients employed in state and municipal institutions. When the Fund’s new director, Zlatko Perinski, made this announcement, I immediately thought of the former Deputy Prime Minister for Good Governance, Arben Fetai, who didn’t show up for work at the Government for over two months. He was getting his salary, yet neither the Prime Minister nor the Minister of Finance knew who was signing off on it. No one knew why he wasn’t coming to work, no inspectors were sent to carry out a random check to see if he was at home, and the fact that he wasn’t only came to light when he posted a photo from Bangkok on Facebook.
He was sent to Brussels as a special envoy, while the rest of us will have inspectors turning up at our homes to check whether we’re really sick. Who knows whether Fetai actually goes to work in Brussels, but Perinski can’t exactly send inspectors to Belgium.
Then again, perhaps the poor man really was suffering, given that he hadn’t come to work for over two months. He went to Bangkok for therapy. For a Thai massage.
And so, well-massaged and tanned, he now represents us in the EU in a proper and dignified manner.
2 I have to admit, it gets a tad boring when Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski isn’t in the country. I miss those three or four daily statements featuring witty remarks on various topics, along with mathematical calculations, figures and numbers, and analyses. Somehow, without him, the news just doesn’t seem to make sense.
Still, he keeps our spirits up even from Washington, where he is stopping off on his way to the UN General Assembly in New York. One way or another, there’s always some PR material to go around.
So, even from America, we learned once again just how wonderful and fantastic life in Macedonia is, how badly the European Union treats us, though we won’t yield even a millimetre to them, how treacherous the opposition is, and just how much of our natural resources is left to be sold off.
Nothing new there. So we wanted to learn something new for a change and asked how many people are in the delegation. And who exactly is in it? Everyone with their own party agenda, everyone with their own diaspora connections. How many days will they be there? And how much will they spend?
I expect an answer something like this:
Hellooo… We are at times the third, at times the fourth-largest economy in Europe, and at this rate, America will be seeking us out, not the other way round. This is no time for division. This is a time for unity. Instead of thanking us for organising a world-class Independence Day celebration for you, you’re asking about money again?
3 The police found the man who had threatened on Facebook to kill the Prime Minister. Mickoski said: “I am, after all, an institution. If I weren’t, I know how such matters are resolved.”
How? For example, I’m not an institution, yet I have no idea how such matters are resolved. I’ve seen it in movies, but in real life, if someone threatens me, should I hire private security, arrange for someone to beat up the person making the threat, drive them around locked in a car boot, or challenge them to a duel in the town square… Or, the most mundane option, report it to the police and wait for them to protect me?
It’s a pity that the Prime Minister left for America immediately after making this statement. We never found out how an ordinary person, someone who isn’t an institution, is supposed to act when faced with a threat.
4 MP Oliver Spasovski revealed that Petar Gajdov, the director of the Agency for the Protection of the Right to Free Access to Public Information, had been hired in 2021 as an ethnic Albanian, because that was how the vacancy had been advertised, but became director in 2025 as an ethnic Macedonian.
Ethnic identity is a matter of personal feeling. But this is one flexible civil servant. He changes his ethnic identity depending on how the post is classified, for a state salary. He puts himself at the service of the state according to what the job advert demands. Under SDSM, he was Albanian. Under VMRO-DPMNE, he became Macedonian.
How one feels depends on the opportunities available on the labour market and what the ruling party has to offer.
5 Veles municipal councillors debated the problem of horse manure left on the streets by horse-drawn carts. Back in 2016, the Council decided that anyone using a horse or donkey for transport had to carry a broom and dustpan to collect the droppings in a bag. As befits an EU candidate country seeking a “merit-based approach”.
In Skopje, a woman was filmed getting out of a Porsche and tossing rubbish off a bridge into the Lepenec River. The police identified the woman but didn’t release her name. She was issued a 40-euro penalty notice. If she pays within eight days, the fine is reduced to 20 euros.
Why isn’t the lady’s identity being revealed? What’s so terrible about us finding out who she is? Are they protecting her privacy? She was the one proudly waving at the camera. Are they protecting her dignity? Make her name public, so everyone knows that the next person to do this will face the same fate. Why is Skopje Mayor Orce Gjorgjievski boasting that the City will buy 3,300 rubbish bins? What good are they? Just throw your rubbish into the Vardar, there are plenty of bridges.
Is it shameful? Shame hasn’t lived here for a long time.
Have the police checked whether the lady might have stolen the Porsche? It doesn’t seem logical that someone could be smart enough to earn the money to buy an expensive car, yet have such a limited mindset that she throws rubbish into a river. If I were a brand manager, I’d make buyers sign a statement promising not to use the car to throw rubbish in rivers, on mountains, or in streets and parking lots, just so they wouldn’t embarrass the brand.
You don’t take a Porsche to Veles. The car we saw in the video could have over 700 horsepower. Horse-drawn carts have one or two horses. A small bag, a little broom and a dustpan won’t cut it for this lady from Skopje with 700 horses. She’d need another car with a trailer behind it just to collect all the shit she’d toss into the Vardar.
Horses and donkeys don’t know about laws, they lack the sense of the public good that we humans have. They just eat, poop wherever they please and multiply. A municipal councillor in Veles says: “Owners should be required to make sure the manure doesn’t end up on the road. That’s how it’s done in the rest of the world, it’s the 21st century, after all.”
Really? So the 21st century has finally arrived? Horses and donkeys have no idea they’re headed for the EU.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
