After Gjorge, Gordana

Erol Rizaov

Two months before the presidential election, VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski declared the party’s winner with the words: “Professor Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova is the new head of state. Macedonia got its first mother of the nation”. Thus, with 408 votes in favor in the VMRO-DPMNE convention, we have our first nation’s mother, a mother of all citizens. After the nation’s father Professor Gjorge Ivanov, who for ten years has selflessly and fatherly repaid for everything his fatherland has done for him, now, of course if we elect her, his teacher and mentor, our nonparty mother Professor Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova will do the same. After the father, comes the mother. Macedonia is saved. After Gjorge – Gordana. As it was after Tito – Tito, but very different.

I understand Mickoski and his great need to declare the winner before the election campaign even starts. It is another desperate attempt to motivate membership after the moral debacle of a criminal party top, fatally and incurably metastasized in the first three governing echelons of the compromised party. His mild distancing from Nikola Gruevski by saying that he is only the party’s past is not enough to cover the tragedy of the 11-year kleptocratic rule and the destruction of Macedonia and its fragile democracy, the entire socio-political and economic order, cultural and personnel genocide, destroying all values ​​and capturing the state with all its institutions with a terrible degradation of the rule of law and the complete justice system, with a brutal collapse of the imposing media reach among 30 countries in the world where Macedonia was in 2006 – 2007. One simply cannot lose that heavy burden by only declaring the father and the creator of Gruevism as past, to forget the criminal association and their misdeeds by saying two words. Amnesia is not possible with a simple sentence: He is our past. And what do we do with the present. Where are the heirs, followers, and perpetrators of the misdeeds that they do not remember history after the state was founded 75 years ago. All those compromised politicians are still at the top of the party.

And now with their help and support of the VMRO-DPMNE base, without them as a strong party, the mother of the nation, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, will introduce the rule of law, constitutional changes as necessary, will speed up the processes for Macedonia’s Euro-Atlantic integration, will correct the mistakes of the Prespa Agreement and will convince the Albanians and other non-Macedonians not to exaggerate with the demands and the use of language; will restore freedom and democracy. Siljanovska-Davkova will wash all the VMRO-DPMNE mess. Bravo. A new era of civil society begins with the demolition of “Zaevism” and the return of “Gruevism.” The mother’s continuity after the father’s departure seems perfect.

The strongest impression from the election victory of Siljanovska with 408 votes, however, left me the maturity of the delegates of VMRO-DPMNE, who assessed the need for a non-party consensual president of the united Macedonians, real patriots united after the great misfortune that Macedonia faced with the change the name of the Republic of Macedonia into the Republic of North Macedonia, after losing national identity and language, after the insult and humiliation from the Western world and the United States in conjunction with the domestic traitors, who defied the Macedonian nation and country with the capitulation agreement with Greece. It would be the true civic consensus, and not as the one from the Macedonian freaks and traitors with the other peoples who live in Macedonia. It would be unpatriotic and too civil, or, as Mickoski says, it would be quite despotic.

The new nation’s mother declared as president before being elected gave me a strong impression of my commitment to a civil society as a non-nationalist person, as she herself approached us with a gentle proof that she was born in a Turkish house and had Albanian brotherhood with a willingness to introduced the rule of law and accelerate the processes of Macedonia’s EU membership and the conquest of European and Western values, the rule of law, constitutional changes and media freedom, citing US Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy and the demolition of “Zaevism” and uniting the people. Yes, it is nice to hear this as a higher form of VMRO-DPMNE’s primitive populism and quasi-patriotism. But, in fact, it is just plain manipulation, which is easily revealed in a few seconds while clicking on the determination of Professor Siljanovska from just one month ago.

The fact that Siljanovska is not a nationalist by her own admission, I really want to believe it, but I have heard the arguments that she has announced about friendship with the various ones from many of the greatest nationalists and chauvinists who caused the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia. Some of them even when they were tried as war criminals in the Hague Tribunal, as the main evidence of their civic orientation, were confessions that they had close friends and best men of a different nationality. The fact that Siljanovska was born in a Turkish house and her brother was close to Albanians becomes worthless in her categorical position to limit the use of other languages ​​in the country as a danger threatening the Macedonian language.

How much a civil society in Macedonia is possible at this stage of its development, Siljanovska is quite aware, both as a scientist and as a former minister, and now as a VMRO-DPMNE non-party presidential candidate. It is a great illusion, even if she was elected prime minister of the VMRO-DPMNE government. The second thing that is extremely unconvincing is how Siljanovska, with her stance on the Prespa Agreement, will speed up EU membership and will foster European and Western values ​​when she preached the opposite until recently, against the agreement and against NATO and EU membership with such a harmful agreement for the Macedonian national and state interests.

And as far as the demolition of “Zaevism” is concerned, she is completely right. The recognitions that Prime Minister Zoran Zaev is receiving from the Western world and among the EU members and neighbors, is becoming unbearable. This cannot be forgiven in Macedonia, not only from the opposition and the coalition partners, but also from his own colleagues in the party. No, this is way too much for the “peasant boy from Strumica”. Professor Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova will unite Macedonia and restore the rule of law along with “Gruevism,” because it is better than “Zaevism.” It’s good that there will not be such a chance, even if she becomes president of the state. As a professor of constitutional law, Siljanovska knows well where her credentials are, unless she really thinks that she should inherit in every respect her predecessor with whom she took the first walk along the Ohrid streets after the great victory at the VMRO-DPMNE convention. This is what the non-party choice and the premature inauguration of the nation’s mother looks like to me.