1 After several years of sieges and negotiations, EVN managed to breach the defences of the people of Arachinovo and managed to enter the village to modernise the network. However, the village of Slupchane in Kumanovo doesn’t surrender. In the village where electricity is widely stolen, citizens have set up barricades to prevent EVN’s teams from changing the electricity meters. The president of the local community, Seljadin Shaini, said the citizens are willing to pay the debt to EVN, but they don’t want to pay interest on the previous interest, and demand a reduction in the price of electricity meters and debt forgiveness for the socioeconomically challenged families.
The Austrian company EVN is an EU company. Could the Government please include Seljadin from Slupchane in Bojan Marichic’s team for our EU accession talks? He’s already involved in the negotiations in the “Energy” cluster. In the field, he operates with the “European front” of Dimitar Kovachevski and his collation partners.
So, the EU is negotiating with the ones who don’t pay and is really lenient with them. And we, who respect obligations and deadlines and pay everything, be it taxes or fines, don’t deserve such leniency.
2 We’ll have to wait throughout the entire summer to find out who said what and how they said it at the leadership meeting between Dimitar Kovachevski and Hristijan Mickoski, but all of that is rendered irrelevant considering the statements made by the Minister of Health, Dr.Fatmir Mexhiti. The Minister, a specialist doctor, a member of the Alliance for Albanians, which became a new partner in the government aiming to strengthen the “European front”, showed us with shocking honesty how that “Europeanisation” works in practice.
The first thing he said after dismissing Dr.Sashko Jovev from the post of director of the Cardiac Surgery Clinic was: “There is no politics in his dismissal”. The second thing he said was “that director position is a proposal of SDSM”. And to make things even clearer, the third thing was said by the leader of his party, Dr. Arben Taravari, also a specialist doctor: “It has not been discussed at all to whom the Cardiac Surgery Clinic should be given”. The only thing missing was a fourth sentence in which they’d tell us which ethnic group should take over the Clinic, so that we’d believe the words of Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski when he says “there is no political interference in the dismissal of Director Jovev”. But don’t worry, we’ll find that out soon.
That’s how things stand – we replaced the director, but don’t worry, that position remains within the same party.
Arben Taravari said: “Let’s give someone else a chance, someone who might turn out to be a professional as well, who might turn out to be better, of course, roughly speaking, he might turn out to be worse than Jovev”.
What truly maters is not to threaten the balance between the parties. The quality of our lives doesn’t really matter. The politicians we elect find it scarier to have the balance between parties threatened than to hire someone unprofessional, lazy, and incompetent. As Taravari says, he might turn out to be worse.
3 The thing I find surprising is why our healthcare workers are silent. To gain so much knowledge, to be asked to save lives and at the end of the day to be afraid of some no-good party coordinators!? It’s not like healthcare workers are some ordinary administrative workers who got employed on a state salary on party merit because they applauded at rallies so the party had to find a job for them. Are they really not aware of how great their power is when it comes to social influence? They could use that power to at least fight for the right to elect the directors of state health institutions on their own, someone who’s part of the staff, based on their experience, based on their reputation among the patients and the colleagues, based on their knowledge, and not to reconcile yourself with the fact that even though you’re an expert, you’re respected by the patients and you have managerial skills, you can never progress enough because you refuse to be “given” or “taken” by some party.
After all, what does “to give” and “to take” mean? Who will they give to? Who will they take from? As if the parties paid for the education of the medical staff from their party treasury. As if the clinics they’re taking and giving don’t belong to us and they can just claim them for their own.
The next step will be for us to get medical treatment based on party membership. The parties should open dispensaries and polyclinics at their headquarters. The party that has been in power for a longer time and has been stealing for a longer time will be able to build operating rooms as well. We’ll have a satellite healthcare system. Not in terms of different regions, but in terms of parties. And just like that the waiting time for surgeries will automatically be reduced. If one party lacks a certain specialty, while another has it, the party leaders will meet at a leadership meeting to negotiate whether they’ll lend each other’s personnel and under what conditions.
The non-affiliated had it coming. They don’t even have to get treatment since they’re making a fuss of everything and don’t even say who they’ll vote for in the polls. Their civil right is to fill the Health Fund. As long as there’s enough money for the commissions of the minister and the party directors, they shouldn’t even bother asking where their money goes.
4 I’m not at all surprised by the ease with which party officials tell each other what they’ll give and what they’ll take from what belongs to all of us. The same way they give and take hospitals, they also share theatres, festivals, art ensembles, museums, schools, kindergartens, national parks… Especially considering the fact that it’s has been normal for a very long time that when another party comes to power they replace even the commander of the fire brigade. And it’s been normal for bin men at utility companies to be afraid whether their contract will be extended because the government has changed. Just as it’s normal for cleaners in kindergartens and schools to earn their salary by attending party rallies.
Hence, it’s normal that there is impunity and selective justice. We’ll punish their people, we won’t punish our people. And to do that, you need judges and prosecutors who are our people. Hence, it’s normal for one of our people to take the money. Why would we give it to someone else? It’s normal for one of our companies to get the business. So what if they’re incompetent? At least they’re one of us.
I’m not saying that there’s no nepotism and corruption in other countries. However, over here, corruption has grown into the standard of living to the extent that it’s not even a shame to say it publicly. And the ease with which politicians say it goes to show that not only is there no political will to tackle corruption, but there is no human will either. The control parties have over our state is socially accepted as normality. It’s grown into a corruption of the spirit.
5I would like to ask the guys from SDSM to stop irritating the guys from VMRO with statements that Mickoski has already accepted a change to the Constitution. If you want your constitutional amendments to be passed as soon as possible, take it down a notch. You can all see that people in VMRO-DPMNE have a short fuse. They themselves no longer know what to demand – elections, a transitional government, a technocratic government, a government without DUI, a government without DUI and without corrupt officials… Although, if the condition is not to have corrupt officials, where will they find so many ministers even in their ranks?
Plus, wasn’t the leadership meeting supposed to be a dialogue? It’s turned into a monologue. Whoever gets up first gets to make the announcement first. Then another announcement follows to address the previous announcement… We’re caught in a loop that lasts for days and that could possibly last for the entire summer. At VMRO, the announcements are ready a month in advance and they usually get up earlier, while the guys from SDSM prefer to sleep longer because they walk side by side 24/7.
Nevertheless, it is certain that there’ll be a change to the Constitution. If only someone else could take the blame.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
