1 The president of the country Stevo Pendarovski claims that the people who attacked the Assembly on 27 April weren’t terrorists, because he “knew something about terrorism and about security problems and dilemmas.” According to VMRO-DPMNE, the attackers who stormed the Assembly to murder in order to stop a democratic change of government are defenders of the Constitution. Previously, the Court ruled that the journalists reporting from the Assembly that night had gone out for a walk.

So, four years after the organized attack on the Assembly on 27 April, we’re facing with a revision of what we saw live on TV and social media. The attackers are defenders of the Constitution. The journalists are not journalists. Just great. Next time they come in the Assembly to crack your heads open, we’ll be watching romantic comedies on TV. The suspense will be greater. Because the president, as far as his expertise in terrorism and security goes, believes the attackers aren’t terrorists. That’s what Nikola Gruevski said on 28 April 2017 – If they’d wanted to kill them, they would have. Those were just some citizens who didn’t want to sit at home in their slippers. And not wanting to sit in their slippers, they found themselves in the Assembly at an “unpleasant event,” as public broadcasters report.

Sooner or later, Zoran Zaev’s promise will be fulfilled. And Gruevski will come back from Budapest.

2 I have a friend who remembers the education reform of 1953. The authorities then ordered students to switch to notebooks instead of writing on the small chalkboards they used to bring to school every day. Instead of constantly writing and wiping the chalkboard with the little sponge tied to it with a rope, they had to be bought notebooks for each subject, pencils, erasers, ink, penholders and ink blotters. My friend remembers that parents used to complain to each other – goodness gracious, we have to buy so many notebooks, lined notebooks, they’ll have to study calligraphy, they’ll need schoolbags, poor children will be overburdened…

Unlike 1953, parents now have computers, smart phones and the Internet. That’s why it’s much easier for them to fight against the reforms in their children’s education. They’re organizing themselves on Facebook, they’re protesting against the digitalization of textbooks. Apparently, their children would spend too much time in front of their computers or mobile phones. Unlike them, who post online, press likes, write and share comments on their computers and mobile phones.

Each generation has its own chalkboards. For as long as I can remember people have talked about how bad our education is. The textbooks are bad, the curriculum is bad, teachers are bad, the universities are a disaster, you can buy a diploma with money, you can get an MA or a PHD with plagiarized theses… The know-it-alls claim that there should be changes in the education system. That people in general are illiterate. And every attempt to introduce something new encounters resistance.

And it’s so easy to understand. All students will still study from textbooks. The only difference is that students in fourth grade will study from digital textbooks in addition to the print ones. Just as in 1953 students didn’t stop using the chalkboards, chalks and sponges when they started using notebooks.

Simply, there’s no logic for a professor at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, who is part of the technological intelligence, a professor like Hristijan Mickovski, to block a reform aiming to improve education with the use of technology. He’s the one who should know how fast technology is advancing. And how important technology is for the society’s development.

However, resistance to the digitalization of education seems logical when the professor is the leader of VMRO-DPMNE. And the role of VMRO-DPMNE is to block anything that presents itself to them to block. It bothers them that healthcare workers danced and sang in the vaccination points, but the education reform Mila Carovska would make doesn’t bother them. Simply, it doesn’t fit the image of blackness of their party statements. A little bit of Facebook hysteria, a little bit of manipulation of the high school students and there you go – trouble par excellence.

Mickoski threatened that VMRO-DPMNE will block this law in the Assembly. But, what we didn’t hear is that Mickoski has a solution for the education issue. What does he offer? Well now, we haven’t heard what his solution would be for any of the other important things in the country. However, as a professor he should have an idea at least for this matter. If he were to tell it to somebody, maybe they’d listen.

3 This way, it turns out that all VMRO-DPMNE does is raise a ruckus. It’s not like they really care about the textbooks. They care about everything that could be used to make trouble for the government. Even if that means manipulating the students from several high schools from Skopje to boycott classes, because fourth-graders in primary schools will use digital textbooks in September!  A little politics won’t do them any harm, especially before the holiday and the long weekend. One school day less.

Why are you boycotting? I don’t know, but we’ll get a sleep-in. We’ll join one more day off with the holiday.

Why are you protesting? Just in case. They’ll give us a sandwich and some juice.

To each generation their own little chalkboard.

4 Look at VMRO are doing now, they’re defending Stojko Paunovski from SDSM. Because, Zaev dismissed him from the position of director of the State Market Inspectorate when he refused to admit the framework employees that he considered incompetent.

At least hold your tongue about the framework employees. Who and in whose time was scheming with the framework employees so they didn’t have to go to work for more than ten years but still got paid? Do you remember the government’s partner Musa – the stone comes from up close – Xhaferi?

Not to mention that in the time of VMRO-DPMNE, their Stojko wouldn’t even have dared to oppose Nikola Gruevski. And even if he had said something, there wouldn’t have been media to publish that. And had he crossed those lines of defense, he would have ended up “in a ditch, along with his wife, along with his children.”

That’s why now Mickoski finds it easy to say every day: “You can’t even fix all the damage we had done. Here, now we’ll question your democratic capacity.”

In Macedonia, memory is no longer measured even in days.

Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski