New energy for new victories in the new era of VMRO-DPMNE

From: Kostadin Bogdanov – member of the Internal Reform Initiative in VMRO-DPMNE

It has been more than half a year since we publicly started the initiative for internal party reform of VMRO-DPMNE, which basically had one main goal, and that is to help our party, in which we are members and activists since we were literally children, and find their own lost ideology and a compass and return to the hands of the membership. The goal was to raise our party’s awareness of the urgent need to replace the constraints of centralism, elitism and authoritarianism within the party, with a new vision, a vision of freedom and an intra-party democracy in which each of the activists will be celebrated for the victories, and responsible for the defeats. Vision in which each member will have the chance to be a leader at a local or central level. A vision that will unite all former and current party members and activists around the ideals of the historic VMRO to build a free, democratic and prosperous country. And finally, a vision that will give our party a chance to re-run the country and be a ruling party.

Unfortunately, in this past period, instead of embarking on an intrinsic internal party debate over the proposed changes to the democratization of the Statute of the party, which were submitted six months ago to the Central Committee for Review, the leadership wasted the time and energy of internal party divisions, labeling and denigrating each member that raised his voice for a stronger VMRO-DPMNE and for a stronger Macedonia. Instead of getting logic, we got hatred. Thugs, “Sorosoids”, mercenaries, “Bailyists”, traitors were only part of the epithets that the leadership directed to all decent party members and patriots who clearly saw the abyss to which the party was moving, and hence the need for urgent reforms to rescue the party.

The abyss became visible a while ago, since the leadership allowed, without consulting the party structures and membership, to participate in the new election despite the fact that, at the time, the party had an absolute majority of 62 MPs in Parliament. Later, the leadership failed to form a government with 51 MPs due to the internal and external isolation of the party caused by fraudulent policies. A month ago, the party completely lost the local government as well. And in the local election that was supposed to be held in May this year and when we probably would have had a much better result than in October. But instead of local elections with better results, we got a heavy blow through the events that took place on April 27 in the Parliament, which in fact was one of the motives for starting an internal initiative with a request for full reform in the party. This was another of the series of wrong political decisions that were carried without consulting the organs of the party and, above all, the members themselves, which decisions brought the party in today’s agony.
However, today, we have a huge chance to inject new energy for new victories, and start a new era in VMRO-DPMNE. This new energy can be injected only if the party’s announced extraordinary congress is a unifying congress, whereby members of the party through their delegates will choose their future leader, while firmly standing behind the Declaration on Democratic, European and Modern VMRO-DPMNE. This is necessary not only for VMRO-DPMNE, but for the country in general.

The public is looking forward to see the new face of VMRO-DPMNE. It is necessary that this new leadership be recognized as credible by the party members, of course, but also from the general public, as well as from the international factor and the Albanian factor in the sense that it will have to rebuild these two completely destroyed bridges in the shortest possible period of time. In a word, it must be a leadership that will at least manage to bring back the party’s votes to 150,000 members and party supporters who left because of the current leadership that has led the party for many years. It must be a leadership that the wider public will recognize as a genuine internal change that guarantees the discontinuity of the wrong party policies of the past. Leadership with a broad vision and readiness in the coming period to quickly unite and consolidate the party, and to lead a new direction that can in due course bring broad support from the citizens of the Republic of Macedonia. In this regard, any choice in which the wider public will not recognize the capacity for substantial change and internal party unification will only further capture the party in opposition and lead to further divisions within the party.

Therefore, it is equally important for the new leadership to have a real passion and capacity to accept and implement the amendments to the Statute of the party immediately. They are a factor of unification inside the party. They are a factor in uniting all former and current members of VMRO-DPMNE behind the idea of ​​a free, democratic and modern VMRO-DPMNE. Changes in the party’s way of acting will restore inner cohesion and energy for a short time, the real energy the party had in 1990, 1998 and 2004. It is time for the new leadership to firmly and solely stand behind the proposed internal party reforms that must be implemented and which will open up new opportunities and potentials for each member and activist in the party, for each new local or municipal committee, for the new Central and Executive Committee. It is time for members to decide for their local or local leaders themselves to decide on the policies of their municipal committee, to decide for themselves on their representatives in the central bodies.

I honestly hope that the reason and passion among the delegates on the congress for a democratic, European and modern VMRO-DPMNE, will take over and the party will continue to develop in a democratic way, according to the ideology the party has since forming. We, the members of the internal reform initiative and the wider public, honestly hope that December 23 will mark the beginning of the new era of VMRO-DPMNE, the era when the party will get the honor to run the country once again.