1 The swimming pool at the Sports and Recreation Centre “Saraj” in Skopje is operational once again after 30 years of neglect. I wasn’t surprised by the news that it had reopened after being handed over to a private investor. What did surprise me was that this became our most-read article of the week.
The Sports and Recreation Centre Saraj was established in 1948 under an urban development plan that envisaged swimming pools, football pitches, stands and running tracks. The swimming pool itself was built in 1955. In 1971, plans were drawn up for three large parks and 5 recreational areas featuring beaches, hotels, restaurants and children’s holiday camps. The plan also defined the network of urban and suburban green spaces, parks and squares on the outskirts of the capital.
So, in 1948, just three years after the Second World War, in a devastated country where almost 80 per cent of the population had no access to water and electricity and around half were semi-literate and illiterate, they planned and built a well-maintained sports and recreation park in the capital. In 1955, just 10 years after the war, it already had a swimming pool, football pitches, stands and other sports and recreation facilities.
Imagine that kind of visionary planning, all in the public interest.
And today? Today in the capital, Skopje, 35 years after Macedonia declared independence, the greatest achievement is considered to be collecting rubbish and mowing the grass.
So it isn’t down to the citizens. It’s down to the leadership.
2 In 1948, the authorities planned green spaces, parks and swimming pools.
In 2026, they planned to separate men from women in swimming pools.
In 1948, they went into the villages to educate women. In 2026, the local authorities in Tetovo decided that only women would be allowed to use the municipal pool on Wednesdays and Saturdays. This decision was made “at the request of the citizens, that is, the female citizens of Tetovo.”
What a shocking example of civilisational regression this segregation is!
Is the pool public? Yes. Does the Constitution state that religious communities are separate from the state and that all are equal before the law? Yes. Does the Constitution state that citizens are equal in freedoms and rights, regardless of gender or religious belief? Yes.
That’s why this request of the citizens, that is, the female citizens of Tetovo, for separate swimming days at a public pool should be rejected. Let them use private pools on whatever terms they wish.
3 Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski, responding to a parliamentary question from Venko Filipche, said that people are disappointed because they see the SDSM leader “in Dubai listening to Haris Dzinovic, and not in prison” and because “they see former officials enjoying themselves on yachts, and not in prison”. He promised that “he will no longer disappoint Macedonian citizens with the sight of former officials enjoying themselves on yachts with Haris Dzinovic playing in the background”.
Whatever. Fine, let’s say that disappointed citizens will no longer see Zoran Zaev and Venko Filipche on the beaches of Halkidiki. Fine, let’s also assume that Mickoski’s promise comes true and that the only place Zaev and Filipche will be laughing is behind bars.
Will disappointed citizens be any happier then? How long will their happiness last? Until they go to the supermarket to buy groceries? There were also disappointed people when former VMRO-DPMNE leader Nikola Gruevski fled to Hungary to avoid going to prison. There are probably others who are disappointed that the current leader is making no effort to bring him back to the country to face justice.
Zaev has been out of politics for five years, yet VMRO-DPMNE, even after two years of absolute power at both the state and local levels, still keeps us entertained with photographs of him on the beach in Paljuri. Every time the opposition criticises them, they respond with: “What about Venko in Dubai?”
After all, people express their disappointment in elections. And it was precisely because they were disappointed with SDSM that they brought VMRO-DPMNE to power.
4 There are certainly many who are disappointed to learn that the Prime Minister sent his wife and son to the Bulgarian ski resort of Pamporovo for their winter holiday.
I don’t care who goes skiing where. But a Prime Minister is expected to have political instinct and to set a personal example when it comes to the policies he advocates. Especially considering the fact he speaks against Bulgaria on a daily basis. Now he’s warning us that Bulgaria wants to stop us from receiving money from the EU’s growth and development funds, while he’s spending those savings on his children’s winter holiday in the same hostile country that has kept us stuck on our path to the EU for years and whose politicians would like to see us disappear as Macedonians. On top of that, when his fellow citizens who haven’t yet obtained Bulgarian passports complain about being harassed and humiliated by the new EU entry and exit system, he tells them to go holidaying at home, while his own family travels to the EU under police escort. He seems to forget that those same citizens paid for his government plane last year so that he wouldn’t be late returning from a holiday in Croatia.
Who knows, perhaps the party will say that the Prime Minister sent his family to Bulgaria as a gesture of good neighbourliness. Mickoski himself announced that he informed his NATO partners that Bulgaria had endangered his family’s safety by allowing the diplomatic note concerning his wife and younger son’s stay at the Bulgarian ski resort to be leaked to the media.
Yet another benefit of NATO membership. Never mind that the guy from Pamporovo now has someone to complain to, thanks to the guy from Paliouri, who changed our country’s name so that Macedonia could join NATO.
5 While in opposition, VMRO-DPMNE’s main promise was that, once in power, it would change the EU negotiating framework.
Two years after VMRO-DPMNE came to power, Minister of Foreign Affairs Timcho Mucunski says that 16 ambassadorial posts are currently vacant. Among them, the Macedonian embassies in Sofia and Athens.
So much for changing the negotiating framework. If anyone still had any illusions that this diplomacy could change things.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
