Institutions that should be shut down

Robert Nesimi

After eight months of governing, it is slowly but surely becoming obvious that the new Government cannot fulfill the high expectations people had from it. It is true that it has shown results in foreign policy, but that same vigor is missing in internal affairs. It seems that everything is the same, with new faces that have nothing different to show from their predecessors. The simple reason for this state of things is the fact that this Government, like all others before, has no guts to systematically reform the overall posture of state towards society, i.e. it is not addressing systemic problems that have been the main causes of all crises since independence.

Among the main generators of these systematic crises, that directly affect all spheres of life in Macedonia, I would point out the problem with the long reach of the state clearly visible through the huge state administration apparatus, as well as the extreme centralization of the country. Rather than providing adequate services for citizens, the first has become the main tool of control of State over Society. Furthermore the State’s intrusion into everything, implemented through this administration, requires and draws huge resources, leaving only crumbs for capital investments and other productive things. The worst is that these resources are then at best badly managed, and often outright abused. On the other hand the extreme centralization concentrates power in few hands, which is a ready-made recipe for dictatorial tendencies that no government so far has resisted to use. Centralization has left other levels of government, such as local government, completely incapable, dependent and plainly turned them into beggars. The same has happened to the private sector.

It is thus imperative that any government sincerely interested in reforms, sooner or later has to address these two systematic problems of governing. In practice this means that that Government has to play by the simple rule: “let local government do what the private sector can’t, and central government do what the local can’t”. This means that the government sooner or later has to withdraw from some spheres of life. A part of its powers and resources should be transferred to the local level, while other parts have to pass from the public to the private sphere.

The list of institutions that should be shut down can be relatively long and colorful. The state has spread its tentacles everywhere and new institutions are cropping up like mushrooms after rain, so a full list would probably require a full study. There are however some institutions that are obviously redundant and easily recognizable as such. I will mention three.

 Ministry of Culture. Culture simply is not a matter of the state. This institution is a remainder of communism, when culture was an important tool of propaganda. It continued as such in democracy, and the freshest example is certainly Skopje 2014, an example of manipulation of culture for political propaganda. That project is also a clear example of gigantic waste of resources, a practice that continues with this government as the nepotism and abuse with the Ministry’s new program has shown.

Culture at the same time is a classic example of an activity that should be treated at the local level. The only way to save culture from the claws of government is to shut down this Ministry. Culture funds should be transferred directly to municipalities proportional to their population, and then left alone to use them. The country can be represented in global cultural organizations directly through the government

State television. MRTV is another remainder from the past. Communication infrastructure and creation of information in those technological levels were expensive and hard, and it required resources that only the state could provide. Furthermore it was the time of communism when the state wanted total control over information and had no desire to split it with other actors.

Today, when a simple Facebook profile can serve for live transmissions, and when we have a number of other channels of information, state television is redundant. Today it has no added value for society, and it has simply become a behemoth sucker of funds, that are predicted to reach 30 million Euros annually in two years.

The best solution is to privatize it. Any sum will be a gain, since it will at least save us 30 million per year. I believe that qualified journalists would have no problems with the new owners or in other mediums. Programs of public interest that are not profitable for private media can be financed in other forms, through various projects. We can keep the Parliament Channel, which does not required much funds anyway.

Academy of Arts and Sciences. This institution is plain harmful. It proposed a division of the country in 2001, published a scandalous encyclopedia, it remained silent even when it found out it was tapped, it removed the public debt clock when ordered by the regime etc. Case after case the Academy has proven that it is an extremely opportunistic and spineless institution. Its mentality is typical for court intellectualism, an ideology that has submission to the state at its core. There is no reason that this institution should continue to exist and waste public money. Its relevant projects, such as those from natural sciences, can be implemented through universities.

As I mentioned this short list is by no means exclusive. I set them apart because these institutions are so clearly redundant. When some government finally takes reforms seriously and does not see shutting down institutions as taboo, these would be the first in the list, but the final list will be much longer.