1 We might as well start taking collective dementia therapy. Or perhaps the Minister of Health, Azir Alium, could import a team of psychiatrists from abroad, just as he’s about to bring in anaesthesiologists from Slovenia for the state cardiac surgery unit. We clearly need help. We must be suffering from a case of reality denial if we believe Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski when he says: “Well, you see, it is a tradition that when SDSM is in Government and when SDSM manages the state services, VMRO-DPMNE finds itself under surveillance.”

In 2000, there was an affair dubbed “The Big Ear”, during which the late Dosta Dimovska from VMRO-DPMNE was the Minister of Internal Affairs, while SDSM leader Branko Crvenkovski, then in opposition, publicly released transcripts of wiretapped conversations involving around a hundred of politicians, journalists, and diplomats. The affair ended up before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, where, in 2013, 17 journalists won a case against the state.

Let’s say new generations have come along, and few remember “The Big Ear” scandal. However, it’s been only 10 years since Zoran Zaev, then leader of the opposition SDSM, publicly released illegally wiretapped conversations recorded at a time when VMRO-DPMNE’s Nikola Gruevski was Prime Minister, and his cousin, Sasho Mijalkov, was the head of the secret service. What we heard was real. At that time VMRO-DMNE had been in power for 11 years.

I was also one of those who received a folder, I saw the transcripts of my conversations and the text messages I’d exchanged. And I stood in court, where I learned they had been wiretapping me for two and a half years and continued to monitor me for two months after I, along with a dozen other journalists, was given a folder at Zaev’s press conference at SDSM. This isn’t a matter of whether I remember. I was there and I saw it. And I keep the folder as a memento, so I really have no idea which tradition Mickoski is referring to.

Unlike Zaev’s “information bombs”, which were tangible, visible, and audible, we still don’t know what we’re talking about when VMRO-DPMNE refers to the news from the National Security Agency  that it sent information to the Public Prosecutor’s Office about possible abuses within the Agency. Is it’s a case of illegal wiretapping, physical surveillance, suspicions of contact with foreign intelligence services, collateral victims, someone caught up by accident…

I can’t really tell if, after so many traumas involving the secret services, people have gone numb and if every new story of this kind feels like something they’ve already read before. Everyone’s been told it’s all quite normal and that it’s not a big deal. Or perhaps they’ve stopped taking politicians seriously no matter what they say. Big or small, whatever they hear seems to go in one ear and out the other.

2 Even without the NSA documents being declassified, and without a court ruling, this isn’t much different from what Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski was doing even when he was in opposition. First, he blamed SDSM for every possible evil and everything wrong in the country. Second, he downplayed all the wrongdoing committed by VMRO-DPMNE between 2008 and 2016, and the party didn’t even bother to apologise. He probably thinks there’s no need to, because they’re all the same. We wiretapped, but you wiretapped too. We stole, but you stole as well.

And then there’s the fact that neither the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Supervising the Work of the National Security Agency and the Intelligence Agency, Skender Rexhepi, nor his deputy, Blerim Bexheti, holds a security clearance, so they can’t actually supervise the security services.

But hey, at least we’re in NATO. So instead of our MPs, someone else’s services are supervising our secret services.

3 Everything the government does is pure theatre. A performance staged to divert attention.

Take, for instance, the latest act playing out at the illegal landfill site “Vardarishte” in the Municipality of Gazi Baba, Skopje. After it caught fire yet again, after half the city, the entire municipalities of Aerodrom and Novo Lisice, were left choking in smoke and without electricity, the very next day the candidate for mayor of Skopje Orce Gjogjievski appeared at the scene, accompanied by the current mayors of Gazi Baba and Aerodrom, Boban Stefkovski and Dejan Miteski, and promised to build a park there.

How can a candidate for mayor promise more than the current mayors? VMRO-DPMNE has been in power in both Gazi Baba and Aerodrom for the past four years. Who was stopping the current VMRO-DPMNE mayors of these two municipalities from doing what the VMRO-DPMNE candidate for mayor of Skopje is now promising? Plus, VMRO-DPMNE holds the majority in the City of Skopje Council. But if we’re already collectively undergoing therapy for reality denial, are we also expected to forget the role of Danela Arsovska, who was brought to power by VMRO-DPMNE?

So if, for example, I were the mayor of Aerodrom and running for a new mandate, I’d sue the mayor of Gazi Baba without batting an eye. After all, he hasn’t done his job properly in his municipality, and thanks to his incompetence, “Vardarishte” is poisoning my voters , the people I need to vote for me.

They’re fellow party members. They’ve had four years to agree on how to deal with the illegal landfill. This way it makes it seem like Orce Gjorgjievski is going to crush them. It’s embarrassing that a candidate for mayor of Skopje comes to their turf, before he’s even elected, and as a potential future mayor, promises their neighbours he will fix their problem because the current mayors weren’t capable of doing that. And these mayors are now asking for a second term and seeking the support of those very voters.

When “Vardarishte” caught on fire, it was Sunday, 31 August. Almost half of the capital’s residents were left without electricity for several hours. Some were getting ready for the first day of school, some were just back from holiday and getting ready for work the next day, and some were returning from weekend trips… A colleague told me she was driving towards the city centre. But, since there was no electricity and the traffic lights were out, she passed three traffic accidents on the way. Fortunately, they were minor accidents, but the bad mood lingered all the same.

And she said to me: “I can’t open a window at home because I’ll suffocate from the smoke, I have no electricity, and I’m driving in a bad mood, I pass every intersection tense and stressed, asking myself: how come no one thought to send at least a single police officer to direct traffic, in a situation where there’s been no electricity for hours? Caught up in all the chaos, the fire, the smoke, the traffic jams, I felt powerless in my own home, in my city, in my country, for God knows which time. Because you realise that the state institutions are simply not there when you need them. Neither in regular nor in emergency conditions. Even though you fund them regularly.

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski