1 Another holiday passed, and the typical Macedonian used yet another chance to complain about their difficult fate. Isn’t the very fact that we have our own country reason enough to be happy? Still, on Independence Day, people just had to whine with pathetic statements such as “our mother Macedonia is beautiful,” but we don’t deserve it.

Feeling sorry for yourself on a holiday, when it’d be normal to rejoice, is the state of mind of someone who rejects responsibility for their own existence, although they have great expectations of everyone else. You have a country, and you don’t know what to do with it. And for everything you don’t like about it, someone else is to blame.

As a professional journalist, I have witnessed and have sometimes even participated in almost all historic events for Macedonia since 1991, and maybe it sounds immodest, but I’m very proud that I’m part of the Macedonian nation-building generation.  That’s why it bothers me when after 31 years of having our own, independent country, some people still think the state is SDSM, VMRO-DPMNE or DUI, and not each and every one of us, the citizens of this country.

2 Is VMRO-DPMNE splitting off from the state? They had a separate celebration for the Independence Day of Macedonia in Avtokomanda, Skopje. With their own people, with their own singers and bands. Let them rejoice in the holiday spirit alone, since they don’t want to breathe the same air with anyone else who’s not a fellow party member.

For Ilinden everyone goes to Krushevo, Hristijan Mickoski goes to Tashmarunishta. For 8 September everyone goes to Skopje, he goes to Smilevo. What will he do when he becomes prime minister of a country where it’s normal for the opposition to have separate celebrations for the biggest public holidays?  Everyone with their gang in the squares of the municipalities they’ve won. Let two separate gigs be played. Let two flags be waved. Let people hate each other. Insisting on deepening the divisions makes no sense for someone who wants to become prime minister, unless Mickoski believes that the more people hate each other, the more they will love him.

If the alternative for the incompetence of SDSM and the arbitrariness of DUI is the current VMRO-DPMNE reinforced by Levica, then the future is bleak. We should try to save ourselves from all of them.

3 The referendum VMRO-DPMNE is pushing for is in the same vein of causing additional divisions. How can a question be so unclear: Are you in favour of abandoning the validity of the Law on Ratification of the Treaty of Friendship, Good-Neighbourliness and Cooperation between the Republic of Macedonia and the Republic of Bulgaria published in the Official Gazette No.12/2018 of 18.01.2018?

They expect to mobilize 900,000 voters with that question? People took to the streets to protest against the French proposal to remove the Bulgarian veto, against the denial of the Macedonian language, against the humiliation we were subjected to when the EU accepted Bulgaria’s nationalist demands as its own values, against Bulgaria’s meddling in the making of our textbooks, against historical issues being included as a condition for entry into the EU…

For once, muster the courage and ask the right question: Are you in favour of joining the EU under the conditions set by Bulgaria? Don’t hide behind vague, empty phrases like “abandoning the validity”, “law on ratification”, and even “Official Gazette No. blah, blah, blah”… It’s all just a lot of drama, so Mickoski would have something to say to journalists when he appears, we’ve collected this many signatures, we’ve collected that many signatures, they’re pressuring our membership… But he hopes the referendum fails, so foreigners won’t be mad at him. Just as when he didn’t have the courage to say whether he’d boycott the referendum on changing our name with the Prespa Agreement, and then went on to brag that he actually had boycotted it.

Why is Mickoski trying to sway people, when there’s no need to have a referendum to terminate the Treaty with Bulgaria? Article 13 of the Treaty states: “Each Contracting Party may terminate the Treaty by giving written notice to the other Contracting Party. The Treaty will cease to be in force one year after the date of receipt of this notice”.

So, don’t spend money on a referendum, don’t set people against each other, and don’t waste our time. VMRO-DPMNE winning the next elections is all it takes. They won’t need a two-thirds majority, or a Badinter vote. Then, they can just find 61 MPs in the Parliament, raise their hand in favour of terminating the Treaty, Mickoski will write a letter and send it to Sofia and – that’s it.

What Mickoski is doing with the referendum is along the same lines as the expertise he’s been demonstrating since he became the leader of VMRO-DPMNE – muddying the waters. Amid a harsh winter, an energy crisis and a war raging in Europe, we’re spending money for a referendum because he can’t wait for elections in which he could possibly win.

4 I can’t believe what I’m reading in the comments on social networks about the news of the death of Queen Elizabeth II. People went so far as to find her guilty for the bombing of Macedonian villages in Aegean Macedonia during the civil war in Greece that ended in 1949, although she was crowned queen in 1952.

You can be a leftist, a republican, you can be an anti-monarchist, you can completely disagree ideologically, the royalist stories and the gossip surrounding the royal court can mean nothing to you. However, somehow I don’t find it normal to make fun of and gloat over the death of a 96-year-old woman.

We’ve known Queen Elizabeth for as long as we can remember. She outlived 15 prime ministers of the United Kingdom. If nothing else, people had to show respect for the 70 years of history. But, no. We only care about showing wickedness. Wickedness legitimized as a geopolitical attitude.

People who don’t know how to be happy about the independence of their own country, rejoiced at the death of a 96-year-old woman.

 Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski