1 When Trajko Slaveski was President of the Skopje City Council, he couldn’t manage to make a decision on purchasing buses for public transport in four whole years. Yet when Trajko Slaveski became Governor of the National Bank, it took him less than a year to decide who would be allowed to acquire “Stopanska Banka Bitola.”
As if Trajko Slaveski actually makes any decisions. That was the case with the purchase of buses, which VMRO-DPMNE used to spite Danela Arsovska, the candidate they themselves had chosen for Mayor of the capital. It was the case with the approval for Serbia’s “Alta Banka” to acquire “Stopanska Banka Bitola”, originally founded in 1948 as “Komunalna Banka” to finance the local population and businesses.
Still, at least Slaveski is consistent in his decisions. When he refused to allow the purchase of buses for public transport, he brought order to the people of Skopje, who were left waiting for buses for hours. Now he’s brought order to the people of Bitola, who are literally fainting outside the ATMs and bank counters of “Alta Banka.” Trajko runs a tight ship. There must be order.
Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski claims that the case involving the Bitola bank was imported. So who imported it? They create a mess, and then they boast about how successfully they’re dealing with the mess they’ve created.
He also claims the opposition is to blame for spreading panic.
Are the media also to blame for continuing to ask: Where were your eyes? Where were your ears?
Yet, we don’t blame the person who allowed a 78-year-old bank to be acquired by someone who, in just six years, went from owning a currency exchange office to becoming the sole owner of a bank? Where was the Financial Intelligence Office, where was the National Security Agency? And the Minister of Finance supposedly knew nothing about the lightning-fast rise of this bank, whose ties to Aleksandar Vučić and his party had been reported on in Serbia for years, and which was even the subject of a money-laundering investigation launched by the European Central Bank in 2024.
Who was supposed to know? The pensioners in Bitola, the farmers in Pelagonia and their children who send them money from Australia so they can enjoy living in the best economy in Europe?
2 It all began in May 2025, when President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova nominated Professor Trajko Slaveski for the position of Governor of the National Bank. Slaveski was a member of the Executive Committee of VMRO-DPMNE and President of the City of Skopje Council, having been elected as a councillor on VMRO-DPMNE’s list. He served as Minister of Finance in Nikola Gruevski’s government from 2006 to 2009. In Ljubcho Georgievski’s government, he served as Minister of Development from 1999 to 2000. It would’ve been nice if the President had at least had the decency to seek consensus on the appointment of the Central Bank Governor. Especially since, in her inaugural address to the Assembly, she pledged to be “a president for both the left and the right.”
There’s a reason I’m bringing up the positions previously held by the current Central Bank Governor. Slaveski resigned from his party posts. The Law on the National Bank guarantees its independence. However, the National Bank is called “national” precisely because it’s supposed to protect the public interest, not the interests of the party that helped you secure all those political appointments.
Ultimately, nothing happens overnight, not even the crisis involving our own Macedonian “Alta Bank.” When you politicise the National Bank, it’s only to be expected that decisions in the banking sector will be made according to the dictates of a political party.
If the Governor acts like a party lackey, then who controls the banking system? The party headquarters?
3 It’s been a while since I last got excited about the European Commission’s reports on our progress toward the EU. And I notice that the people around me aren’t particularly excited either, because there’s nothing in those reports that they don’t already know, see, or experience in their everyday lives. As for the government, it isn’t excited in the slightest.
Over the years, we’ve received both good and bad reports from Brussels. But since the government knows that even if we received the best possible report, we wouldn’t move forward, there’s no reason for it to make life uncomfortable for itself at home. Especially when it’s facing a divided and disoriented opposition that’s entirely preoccupied with its own internal affairs.
I must admit I’m a little disappointed that we aren’t among the four leading candidates: Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine and Moldova. When we were granted candidate status in 2005, Montenegro hadn’t even declared independence yet. And let’s not forget that back in 2000, when we became the first to sign the Stabilisation and Association Agreement, we were ahead of Croatia, which has been an EU member for 13 years now.
We aren’t all that different from them, but we have different neighbours. None of these four countries has neighbours who are such bitter enemies that they claim you don’t even exist, while you want to become part of that same family. Truth be told, Ukraine is facing an enemy much like ours, one that claims Ukrainians are an invented nation and that the Ukrainian language is merely a dialect of Russian, but, unlike our case with Bulgaria, Ukraine is fortunate that Russia isn’t in the EU and therefore holds no veto power.
There’s nothing to be expected from Bulgaria with the duo of pro-Russian President Iotova and pro-Russian Prime Minister Radev. Things are quiet within Trump’s perimeter, the perimeter Mickoski had pinned so much hope on, especially now after the US Congressional and Senate elections. He hasn’t even sent us an ambassador, that’s just how important we are to him. Mickoski is now left without Orbán to provide loans before elections and without Vučić to buy his banks.
We’re all stuck. Completely stuck. So, we’ll just keep living in our fantasy that we’re the best economy in the world. And we’ll wait for the rest of the world to change.
4 The online community was stirred up after Petar Bogojevski, the president of a minor party that’s part of the governing coalition, stated on a national private television channel that feminism has led women to behave inappropriately and that they should be under the supervision of a man. He then went on to spout nonsense elsewhere, claiming that women shouldn’t be allowed to go to kafanas[1] alone, that it’s a man’s duty to supervise them and that every man needs female care.
This is no ordinary man. He’s a professor at the Military Academy. He was appointed to this position as part of a political arrangement with a coalition partner, after being removed from his previous post as Director of the National Agency for European Educational Programmes and Mobility, which oversees programmes such as Erasmus, over discriminatory remarks and hate speech.
The state pays him to educate young people. When a professor at the Military Academy preaches on national television that women should be under the supervision of men, that’s not merely the private opinion of someone who doesn’t allow women to go to kafanas alone. It raises the question of what values we’re instilling in the future officers of a NATO army. And whether the Military Academy distances itself from such views.
This man clearly has a problem with women. He teaches soldiers in a country that produced seven female national heroes during the anti-fascist struggle. He has a problem with Albanians, yet those heroines included women of different nationalities who fought as partisans. He also has a problem with the communists who liberated his country and established his state. And the academy that pays his salary is named after General Mihajlo Apostolski.
And just two days after the professor made these statements, another woman was murdered in Bogdanci, solely because she was a woman.
Can’t control her? Beat her. Won’t listen to you? Burn her. Wants to leave? Kill her. Let her jump off a balcony, taking her daughter with her.
The latest victim, 17-year-old Biljana from Bogdanci, had previously sought protection from the institutions. Just like so many other women before her.
At this point, we’re no longer just talking about some professor and his medieval mindset that aligns perfectly with the hypocrisy of a government that replaced the subject “Sex Education” in schools with “Health Protection.” We’re talking about a state where a public official explains how men should control women, while the institutions fail to control the men who threaten those very women.
Where are the institutions that have been captured by political parties? It’s bad enough that they’re captured, but couldn’t they at least do their jobs? Where are their eyes? Where are their ears?
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
[1] Translator’s Note: In previous columns, I have translated the Macedonian word kafana as restaurant, bar, tavern or pub, depending on the context. In this particular case, however, I have chosen to retain the original term because it carries a cultural significance that none of these English equivalents fully captures. Deeply rooted in our culture, a kafana is a place for socialising, eating, drinking and entertainment, sometimes described by scholars as an extension of the living room.
