1 Oh, if only we all possessed the determination and unity of our air traffic controllers, and if we could rebel against the parties that hire incompetent personnel in our state institutions. Even the date was right for them when the Government was negotiating with them to postpone the strike – The Day of the People’s Uprising, 11 October. It was a coincidence but a welcome one to wake us up that we need a new civil uprising. Not like the one in 1941 with an attack on the police station of the Bulgarian fascist administration that had occupied Macedonia, but, as Zoran Zaev would put it, with pen in hand, to organize ourselves and to free the country from the grip of the parties that hold it occupied everywhere they’re in power, both at the central and local level. In our time, the police stations are all the ministries, public enterprises, agencies, municipalities, utility companies and institutions filled with incompetent and lazy personnel who answer only to the party that ensured their employment. After all, the problem isn’t that they’ve been employed based on their party and ethnic affiliation. So be it. The real problem is that they’re incompetent, inept and irresponsible. And the biggest problem is that we keep paying them to be – incompetent, inept and irresponsible.
And we even find ourselves in a position to listen to their sad stories about how low their salaries were. So let them cut employments in half, that way salaries will be higher for the ones who are good and don’t slack off. If they’re not satisfied with the state salaries, let them go to a private company, let them prove their worth for more money. Let them start their own businesses. That would give our economy a nudge, things will be better for everyone. They’re saying they have loans to repay and children to educate. Give me a break. As if employees of private companies don’t have loans to repay and children to educate, so they’d settle with working only for the children of administrative employees. Come to work late, leave early, make a deal with the manager to arrange a long holiday. You go to work without any responsibility. If you’re late with a specific case – you’re late, what can you do, if you make a mistake – you’ve made a mistake, what can you do. No one punishes you, no one fires you. Has anyone been punished for failing to print textbooks for three years?
In Air Traffic Control, there was a case where a woman was hired as a security officer through an advertisement that lasted for three days and during the weekend, she came to work the first day, she worked a bit at the security booth, the second day she was promoted to some kind of clerk and on the fourth day she took maternity leave due to a high-risk pregnancy. That means that the parties who’ve occupied our state feel so strong that they’re willing to endanger even the safety of air traffic in an attempt to secure votes using our mutual money. Completely insane – as if they or they loved ones will never get on a plane. How did they destroy the state enterprise “Macedonian Railways”? They piled up administrative employees in Railways, and now there are no trains, even for them. They piled up administrative employees in “Macedonian Post Office”, and now there’s no mail, even for them. They piled up administrative employees in “State Roads”, and now there are no safe roads, even for them.
A state can’t operate without an administration. But then again, which state could afford to support so many slackers?
If we continue to pile up employees in the administration – we’ll be left without a state. Do the people in power understand that we’re headed for ruin? That the first to bite the dust will be the ones who fill the budget, then the ones who spend it, as there’ll be nothing left for them to take. We’ll be left without healthcare, customs, police, army, education… Private companies are begging for workers. Our children are moving abroad. Eventually, only pensioners and administrative employees will remain. Sooner or later, we’ll be left without land because the Municipalities are selling land to make money from the utilities for building, so they’d be able to pay salaries to administrative employees. And once they’ve sold everything, where will they get salaries from? Our country is small, we don’t have much.
So, this time it really is time for a civil uprising. With a pen, of course. But with quality ink this time. Not with the one Zoran Zaev used, which started to fade as soon as SDSM and DUI came to power. But also not with the ink of VMRO-DPMNE, because even after seven years, we’re still living with the devastation in the institutions left by their rule. As for Levica, aside from slurs and curses, they don’t even have any ink to offer.
2 President Stevo Pendarovski, in an interview with TV Telma, said that he alone, within the current political landscape, has maintained for the entire year, that after the French proposal was passed in the Assembly, there should have been an evaluation on the improbability of forming a two-thirds majority and that that the amendment to the Constitution should have been left to a future majority in the Assembly. However, he doesn’t dispute that the French proposal is good.
When people who had a little more touch with reality were discussing this for a year and a half, the government labelled them as anti-Europeans. Is Stevo Pendarovski anti-European now? No, he isn’t, since he still says the French proposal is good. And the Minister of Foreign Affairs, in an interview with the German newspaper “FAC” a few weeks ago, said: “I am quite sure Bulgaria will continue to formulate new demands”. Nevertheless, he too says the French proposal is good.
How can it be good if it can’t be enforced? How can it be good if it doesn’t work for us? How can it be good if we’re remain trapped and don’t progress towards the EU?
It’s good only for the government, which bought itself a year and a half. They’re relentlessly trying to include Bulgarians in our Constitution, like a dog with a bone, instead of getting down to business to fix our country. Who are the politicians that will lead us into the EU? The current ones? They claim they’ll bring children back from abroad once the Constitution is amended. Enough already. The tales of the EU they use to dazzle us and waste our time and energy only enable them to cling to their old ways. This way parties can continue to hire whomever they please and to continue to steal. It allows them to cater to the needs of their clients, who are piled up in institutions at both the state and local level, and the needs of officials, who can continue to steal from us with impunity.
3 Dimitar Kovachevski says we’ll be the fastest-growing economy once we join the EU. Is it going to happen out of thin air? Are we to believe that we’ll go to bed as Cinderella one night and wake up as princesses the next morning, because the EU will use a magic wand to bring us golden carriages on our dirty streets?
The rate of economic growth for this year is projected at 1.8 percent. An entire state budget is allocated just for their salaries and their stealing projects. We could talk about us becoming the fastest-growing economy if we went from negative one to 0, or to positive one. Or if we confiscate all the money politicians and parties stole and invest it into new business. But that won’t happen. Every single day, we witness that bandits are saved because the statute of limitations on their cases expires because of the amended Criminal Code. And that’s not even news worthy of our attention anymore.
The government assures us that we’ll join the EU by 2030 but how do they expect us to think about the future when we can’t catch a break from their banditry even now, in 2023?
4The fact that the trains from Skopje to Bitola are not running is no longer headline news. For the second time in two weeks, the railway traffic between the two largest cities in the country has been disrupted due to citizens burning fields and accidentally setting the railway tracks on fire as well.
Then again, why would we need a train to Bitola? Our train is bound for the EU. And not just on any track – it’s the fast track.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
