1 Is there no one in the government who will finally tell Bulgaria “Enough is enough!” To be honest, the European Union should be told the same thing for trying to civilize the uncivilized denial of our right to self-determination, which was imposed on it as a shared policy by one of its member states. They’re presenting it as a bilateral dispute.
Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikolay Milkov said that “if the name of the club “Tsar Boris III” is a problem, then the gymnasium in Skopje that bears the name of Josip Broz Tito is a much bigger problem.”
It’s tedious to explain over and over again: Tito was an anti-fascist, he recognized the uniqueness of the Macedonian people and the Macedonian language and from that anti-fascism, the state of Macedonia was born, which experienced the greatest and the fastest development in the post-war years. The Bulgarian tsar, Boris III, was in cahoots with Hitler, Germans allowed the imperial army to occupy Macedonia, the Bulgarian government carried out forced Bulgarisation and took 7.144 Macedonian Jews to the Nazi death camps.
Honestly, I don’t know what the greater insult is anymore.
Is it the brutal provocation of opening a Bulgarian club in Ohrid with the name of Tsar Boris III, a collaborator of Hitler who joined Bulgaria to the fascist Tripartite Pact? And to make things worse, it’s in close proximity of the house where the court of the Bulgarian fascist occupier sentenced to death five Macedonian communists – anti-fascists, in 1941. Similar to the case with the “Ivan Mihailov” Club, which they opened in Bitola in the old Jewish quarter.
In my opinion, the greater insult is that our government is playing dumb. Ok, DUI are minding their own business, as if they’re not from around here. But, how do people in SDSM think someone would take them seriously and respect them if they continue to ignore the provocations from Bulgaria and if they remain silent in front of the EU? Did they teach them in school who Tsar Boris was during the occupation, or did they skip history lessons? On top of that, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement asking to us to behave “peacefully and with dignity.”
Asking us to equate fascism with anti-fascism, with dignity.
Or, perhaps, the greater insult is the hypocrisy of the EU with its disharmonious policy shared by 27 parties, which is heard in practice through the statements some officials make – “now you just need to change your Constitution” and after that it will all depend on you. What the hell do you mean by it will all depend on us, when an EU member state doesn’t recognize us as Macedonians who speak the Macedonian language, and you accepted that with a written document certified in Brussels? Changing our Constitution is a condition just to start the negotiations. Still, you haven’t given any guarantee that Bulgaria won’t block our admission to the EU by referring to that very statement that there is no Macedonian language. They’re simply causing these provocations to complicate our accession to the EU, to make changing the Constitution even more difficult to swallow. We find ourselves in this situation because the European Union is tolerating Bulgaria’s denial of the Macedonian people and its language – that country is now equating fascism with anti-fascism, and the other 26 member states are trying to save face – there’s nothing we can do about it, you yourselves should solve the bilateral dispute.
After all, it’s irrelevant whether any Bulgarian has anything against Tito. In World War II, Bulgaria was on the side of the fascists, and Macedonia was on the anti-fascist side. The EU is now making us forget that and if we want to join the EU we have to bow down to the Bulgarian fascists. While our government is making us subject ourselves to collective self-oblivion and brain surgery and to do it with dignity. Otherwise, they’ll label us as anti-Europeans.
2 In order to prevent future provocations, the Government announced that it would form a Council for appropriate names for citizens’ associations. Blah blah, just a lot of hot air… As if they couldn’t have stopped the provocations by now. If the state had treated the registration of these Bulgarian associations the way it’s treating us as citizens when we need to get a document, none of this would have happened. How come, they register them so promptly, while they get our names wrong, our addresses don’t match, we don’t have all the documents, and then they tell us to come back over and over again, clerks get sick, they go on maternity leave…
It’s not nice, is it? Of course it’s not, I absolutely agree. But then again, it’s not nice for us as citizens, every time we have to face the administration at state institutions. They’ll complain that citizens are causing provocations on purpose? So, let them complain. We’ve been complaining as well, but there’s no one to hear us. Will they sue? Let them. They’ll sue in Strasbourg? Let them. Once the courts here have completed the cycle of 4-5 years, let them sue in Strasbourg. Are we afraid that in Strasbourg they’ll find our country guilty? Well, there are 13 rulings of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg against Bulgaria for refusing to register Macedonian associations and it still doesn’t give a damn – there it is, dictating the EU’s expansion policy towards the Western Balkans.
If the tsar who was Hitler’s collaborator is so important to the Bulgarians, let them celebrate him and open clubs with his name in their own country. In Macedonia, his name is associated with crimes and is considered anti-Macedonian. This is our country and we decide which names we will put here. In our own country we make our laws and our rules apply. If only we had a government which wasn’t lazy to implement that and which wasn’t so submissive to Bulgaria, scared of what EU officials might say.
3 This whole thing with the Council on appropriate names for citizens’ associations is very similar to the Council for better education. The Government had nothing better to do, as if it’s already dealt with all crises before the winter, so it formed a Council for Advancement of Education. Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski will preside, and five ministers will advise him.
Then, why does the Ministry of Education exist? Why does the Education Development Bureau exist? Are they not in favour of improving education? And why hasn’t the Minister of Education resigned? Isn’t he the one who’s responsible for the advancement of education? Why is he a minister? To have photos taken? Or to just hire party members? He can’t even conduct a tender properly – there were neither textbooks nor report cards for students on time.
This is an act of shifting responsibility. If you don’t want to solve a problem, form a Council. The minister is not to blame, the Council decided, the Council will be to blame. The same method can be applied to all other ministries. Let ministers have photos taken and hire people, and if they’re not doing a good job in their sector, the Government can just form a Council for advancement. Let ministries be dissolved. At least we’ll save money on drivers and secretaries.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
