Neither Nuremberg nor Kafka

Erol Rizaov

North Macedonia is more shocked by the start of rule of law, and less than the ruling on the so-called “Bloody Thursday of 2017”. A total of 211 years in prison were ruled only for the events in the Parliament, and one week earlier six more years for election irregularities. In the final phase, there are still many trials of untouchables and former high-ranking officials until recently. Courtrooms are packed with accused of various serious crimes, organized crime, corruption, violation of human rights and freedoms, election irregularities, abuse of authority, and new cases are filed every day, and there are new investigations.
A turn to the detriment of justice is possible at any moment, since the final proceedings in all court cases have not been completed. The political black market from the Appellate Court to the Supreme Court could start working again. The amount of supply and demand determines the price. Only this time, the sacrifice of several pedestrians could leave the king naked for two horses, in a mate position, unable to move, neither forward nor backward.

However, it is best to wait for the final court decision to see whether the prisons will get new tenants, or whether everything will end with detention. So far, none of the untouchables has been taken to the Idrizovo prison. Some fled abroad, others were released and are free due to the amnesty, others awaited a new reconciliation or an abolition, and the rest put all their faith and pray to Jovo the Supreme.
What is causing the most excitement and controversy is that in the campaign for the presidential election that is largely, although it still has not started officially, court decisions before and after their adoption are commented publicly in a language that is quite worrying, because if those people come to power, there will be no hope that the rule of law and the functioning of the rule of law would be ever possible. All court verdicts are welcomed as a result of the framed processes of politics and as a political calculation and the persecution of innocent people. They do not recognize the crimes that are evident and clear as daylight.

Hristijan Mickoski, the leader of the main opposition party, dramatically announced the verdict with a hundred years in prison for the so-called “Bloody Thursday”, which had all the features of an organized coup attempt and murders of lawmakers. He says it’s a “Nuremberg trial of vengeance and nothing else”. There have been many uttered nonsense and immature statements by politicians in these past 28 years of independence. But such a shameful, stupid and damaging written message of a man who sees himself as a future prime minister of the country, who is a university professor and teaches students, has never been heard, nor seen in anywhere the world. A trial in his own country against his own party colleagues and followers for an event that we all saw on live TV, and compare it to the trial of criminals against humanity in World War II is a sin for which Mickoski should order his own house arrest decision and not leave his house out of embarrassment for at least five years. I do not know what is more embarrassing – that a man with a PHD does not know what the Nuremberg trial is, and equates the trial of war criminals with a trial of Macedonian putschists and “patriots” in the 21st century.

Equating the misdeeds of the Nazis and the “patriots”, both of them as victims of political vengeance. Or, if Mickoski knows who was tried in Nuremberg, so he deliberately says something that enrages thousands of people. Imagine, although it is unthinkable, something like this might be uttered by a politician in European countries, for instance in Germany or France. I think that farewell to politics would follow at the exact moment after learning not so much about the severity of his mistake, because it is not possible, but the loss of reason. I ask myself, does Mickoski know what he is talking about, is he is aware of the amount of embarrassment he inflicts in the reputation of the country, is it possible for such a person with scarce knowledge to become prime minister? Cynics say that he did nothing wrong except that it was not 100, but 211 years in prison.

Tragicomic is VMRO-DPMNE’s announcement with an explanation what its leader actually wanted to say, left as a request from Gruevski., As if, the comparison with the Nuremberg trials did not refer to the trial and convictions, but to the years of the sentence. It’s always like this, when someone wants to get away with something, instead of apologizing deeply and saying goodbye to politics. And, declaring the trial in Skopje as a Nuremberg trial of retaliation and nothing else, can the VMRO DPMNE strategists explain this as well.

Presidential candidate Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, who does not fail to point out her intellectual superiority, chose to use the words Kafka trial to condemn the pronounced verdicts. She probably forgot that Nikola Gruevski had the rights to this term right before escaping from the country when he was found to be a victim of a Kafka trial. I agree that it is a lesser sin to be a bigger VMRO-DPMNE supporter than Nikola Gruevski and less shamefully compare Franz Kafka’s trial fo Gruevski than the Nirnberg trial of Mickoski, but it is still an intellectual debacle of Siljanovska-Davkova. Kafka’s man character did not know why he was accused and convicted, unlike the main characters of Professor Siljanovska-Davkova and Mickoski who very well know why they were accused and convicted.

Siljanovska-Davkova says that the sentence is “draconian” and that it is a matter of injustice and political persecution. At the same time, she condemns the amnesty of the attackers in the events that took place in the the country’s Parliament. Professor, let’s just put the mask on Janus, which was reserved for you in the morning when you are acting as a Professor of constitutional law, not as a politician, Mickoski’s presidential candidate. So, if we fully agree with you that amnesty is a mistake of politics and a degradation of the rule of law then what do we do with the verdicts for the organizers of the intrusion into parliament and of the violence that was witnessed by the entire world. I believe that you too saw it many times, even though we did not know what you thought of it for a long time, except for a short verbal condemnation. Is that also an injustice, a political vengeance, or you do think that everyone should be released because you put Janus’ mask as a politician for this part of the election campaign.

You yourself announced that you will have two faces of the Janus god if you were to be elected as head of the state. One as a professor of constitutional law and a protector of the rule of law, and there would be yielding there, and the latter as a politician who accepts reality. Which, I suppose, signifies that you will be flexible and accept everything that is adopted in parliament, even it was not signed by your predecessor. Of course, if you end up in the presidential residence in Vodno, which will be difficult without VMRO in the MVRO. If so, you will need to start facing the truth and stop giving false hope that you will change a lot of things.
But , even though you are still not elected, you began wearing both masks at once, and at the same time condemn the amnesty as a law professor, and as a politician you say that the organizers of the bloodshed are unfairly convicted. There is really something Kafka-like in your statement, but not in the court proceedings and the verdict. We have not heard you quote or comment any words from the judge’s explanation.

Nothing new from VMRO-DPMNE. This verdict, like the rest of them so far, has been marked as a political calculation and persecution. The top of the most patriotic party remains in defense of the participants and organizers of the coup attempt on 27 April 2017, just as it did after the violence in the Parliament of December 24, 2012, when the MPs of the then main opposition party SDSM were beaten and the reporters were violently thrown out from their jobs in Parliament for the first time in the parliamentary history of the country since ASNOM.

As for a third bloodshed in Parliament, if politics pardons the first two, we expect Hristijan Mickoski to describe it as the arson attack on the Reichstag building by the Communists.

However, the embarrassment is a lesser is when a constitutional law professor and a presidential candidate do not know what constitutes a so-called “Kafka trial”, than when a physics professor, a candidate for a prime minister, doesn’t know what the “Nuremberg trials” mean.