1 Diplomatic passports are the real problem. If all members of the Anti-Corruption Commission had diplomatic passports like President Tatjana Dimitrovska, perhaps even Cveta Ristovska, who was assigned the case of the director of the National Security Agency (NSA), Bojan Hristovski, would have gone to Plovdiv to investigate the English language certificate issued by a studio called “Julia,” which doesn’t even issue TOEFL certificates. Instead, the members of the Anti-Corruption Commission unanimously decided that matter was outside their jurisdiction.

As for the petition to investigate Director Hristovski’s diploma from the private university where he graduated in economics, the Anti-Corruption Commission said that too wasn’t within their jurisdiction. They stated that “the State Education inspectorate is the competent authority responsible for establishing the facts about the disputed faculty diploma.”

So why did they wait for three months? Why didn’t the anti-corruption officers say right away that it wasn’t within their jurisdiction? Perhaps they don’t even know which matters fall under their jurisdiction. After all, why would they even bother investigate the issue when Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski, immediately after Bulgarian media reported in October that the studio in Plovdiv issued fake TOEFL certificates, said that the case was going to be investigated by the Anti-Corruption Commission, and added he was confident “everything was according to the law,” and that “Hristovski is an honest man.”

A slapstick comedy would seem like a serious play in comparison to what the SCPC produced with reporter Cveta Ristovska and its decision regarding Bojan Hristovski.

2 Why would the Anti-Corruption Commission bother with anything and anyone connected to the ruling party, given we all know how this institution behaves when VMRO-DPMNE is in power. Do you remember the Commission from 2016, when the then-President Goran Milenkov, when asked by journalists to show Nikola Gruevski’s asset declaration, said: “I kindly ask for us to put an end to this issue forever and ever, amen.”

That’s why, to hell with this Anti-Corruption Commission and the “robust” fight against corruption. To hell with the donations from foreign taxpayers in the US, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and other countries for Macedonia’s fight against corruption. To hell with an Anti-Corruption Commission, which, instead of cooperating with the media, argues with journalists who investigate corruption and refers them to official biographies posted on the official websites of the SCPC, the Assembly and the NSA, and at the rate things are going, it will soon be involved in personal witch hunts. What can you expect from anti-corruption officers who took over two months to deal with something as trivial as whether the prime minister paid for his son’s plane ticket to Washington from his own account when he accompanied him to the NATO Summit in July? A question like that can be answered with just one click. And the most interesting detail in the case involving the NSA director is that, unlike him, who passed 40 exams at a private economics faculty in one year, Ristovska, who investigated the case, studied economics at a state university for 10 years.

In fact, we saw their true colours from their very first move, when they requested diplomatic passports because they had a lot of invitations to travel abroad. They attend all sorts of training in the USA and the EU to learn how to fight against corruption. Perhaps what they really learned was to first secure privileges for themselves.

At the last SCPC session, we publicly asked whether, in addition to President Dimitrovska, the other members of the SCPC had also received diplomatic passports. They didn’t answer us. So much for transparency.

That’s why, let’s stop fooling ourselves that we have an independent institution that will alert us to corruption and nepotism in public institutions. And let’s kindly put an end to the issue of the work of the SCPC’s work. Forever and ever, amen.

3 On December 24, Parliament passed the amendments to the Public Procurement Law in the first reading. NGOs working on anti-corruption projects warned that the proposed amendments would abolish the control of public procurement currently carried out by the Public Procurement Bureau and would further increase the risk of corruption.

The SDSM parliamentary group requested a public debate on the amendments to the law. The ruling majority didn’t accept the proposal. Following this, the SDSM MPs left. A total of 61 MPs were present at the session. The amendments were approved with 61 votes. Meaning, all from the government.

The next day, the coordinator of the SDSM parliamentary group, Oliver Spasovski, commenting on the New Year’s address by President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova in Parliament, said he expected her to “publicly condemn the adoption of the Law on Public Procurement, which undermines transparency,” and urged her not to sign the decree of the law.

Why would Spasovski urge the President not to sign the law, considering not a single SDSM MP voted against it? What’s the point of not voting “against” but simply leaving the hall? The government already had the majority for a quorum anyway. At least voting “against” would have left a record for history. It would have been remembered. And it would have justified their salary.

The same way VMRO-DPMNE talked about a captured state during the last 7 years while in opposition, despite having previously captured it during its 11 years in power, now DUI, after its 20 years in power, has been talking about captured state in the last six months while in opposition.

DUI complains about the “systematic capture of the institutions of justice by this government and the conformism of certain judges and prosecutors who have positioned themselves at the service of politics.” At the same time, it asks Mickoski why he hasn’t filed a case against Deputy Prime Minister Izet Mexhiti regarding Skenderbeg Square, which he called Tenderbeg while in opposition, and the 30 buildings in Chair that were legalised with backdating. This same Mexhiti was a mayor of DUI and part of the party’s senior leadership.

So, when we complained that DUI was capturing the institutions and installing judges and prosecutors, they sold themselves as champions of Europeanism. Now that an arrest warrant has been issued for Artan Grubi, suddenly the state is captured.

Both VMRO-DPMNE and DUI have a prime minister and a deputy prime minister who are accused of and convicted for corruption, and are also on the blacklist of the U.S. State Department. That’s why the state feels captured to them when they’re not in power.

5 “Radio Skopje is speaking, Radio Skopje is speaking. Dear listeners, we are broadcasting live from the Assembly Hall at the Second Session of the Anti-Fascist Assembly of the People’s Liberation of Macedonia…”

December 28, 1994 marks the first time in liberated Macedonia that the Macedonian language was heard freely on the air. The announcement was made by Vlado Maleski, followed by a speech from the first president of Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia, Metodija Andonov – Cento.

On December 28, 2024, Parliament had no plans to mark the 80^th anniversary of one of the pillars of Macedonian statehood – Macedonian Radio.

Still, that’s no reason not to offer congratulations. Both to our colleagues at the national broadcaster and to ourselves. Long live the Macedonian language.

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski