Political Mannequin

Gjorgji Spasov

In Macedonia for many years, the “first truncheon” – as people here like to call the police minister, was in the hands of a Gordana. She was far from illiterate. She had graduated in England, spoke fluent English, published articles in the magazine Politicka Misla – Political Thought, and from the position of Minister of the Internal Affairs for nine years, according to her own words, she did her job exclusively according to the constitution and law. Even before the fall of the previous government, it turned out that the illegal wiretapping of thousands of citizens and opposition was carried out according to that constitution and law. According to that constitution and law, elections were rigged, many financial frauds and crimes occurred, and the unjustly living or dead “enemies” of the regime were lustrated. Under that constitution and law – which she defended, Macedonia entered into a harsh conflict with all its neighbors defending the Constitution, the historical name of Macedonia, the historical heritage of the ancient Macedonians, the newly composed ancient identity of the Macedonians, the renaming of the streets and public buildings according to the names of the ancient heroes and turning the Skopje Square into Disneyland from ancient Macedonia.

Now that Gordana has been stuck somewhere in the court labyrinths, according to the constitution and law, and her boss Gruevski, who put her in that position, sends us congratulations and greetings from Budapest where he escaped with a sufficient sum of money, due to the “danger of political persecution” in the country where he ruled according to the constitution and the law.

And just when we thought that we would get rid of bad associations involving Gordana, VMRO-DPMNE, again according to the constitution and law, offer us a new Gordana, this time as the future head of state.

Unlike the old Gordana, who worked in Gruevski’s famous criminal company for money laundering and financing the opposition Analitiko even before she became an official, this new Gordana rightfully says she owes Macedonia. She, along with the children of Kiro’s friends from Vodno (the sons of Krste Crvenkovski and Vlado Maleski) as the sister-in-law of Kiro’s late friend Pavle Davkov, entered the Macedonian government as a minister without portfolio after the first elections in 1990. The only thing she was remembered by during her work in that government was obtaining a very lucrative duty-free shop for her husband, as only a few selected officials from that government and judges received and made a fortune, according to the constitution and law, of course.

After that short and lucrative excursion into politics, Gordana seemed to have disappeared from the radar in politics. They say, she devoted herself to her academic career together with her colleague Gjorge Ivanov, and for a long time, in the catacombs of the Faculty of Law in Skopje, they both thought on the topic “How to save Macedonia?”
When Ivanov managed to get under Gruevski’s skin after the victory of VMRO-DPMNE in 2008, with his stories about ancient Macedonia and the ancient origin of the Macedonians, about the Moscow citizens who spoke Macedonian and with their ideas about a system of governance according to the methods and instructions from Vladimir Putin, but also to Erdogan, then both of them realized that the salvation of Macedonia (primarily from the Greek danger and from the Albanians) can only come if one of them becomes president of Macedonia. The new Gordana is placed first on the list in support of Ivanov’s candidacy for president in 2009 and since his election as president to date, she is the main supporter of all his harmful policies.

She, just like Ivanov and before she discovers “Gruevski’s wisdom”, she is a member of the Board of Directors of the Open Society Foundation and close to SDSM. But soon they both embraced nationalism “according to the constitution and law”.

In the Balkans, this kind of nationalism is known as the nationalism of legalist Vojislav Kostunica from Serbia, who was the president of Serbia for a certain period of time after Milosevic. Kostunica, like Milosevic, did not give up Kosovo, supported Republika Srpska, believed that Serbia was up to where Serbian language is spoken, he spoke about Serbian countries in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia, believed in the need for an Orthodox and Christian brotherhood, talked about Serbia that is fighting only for justice, righteousness and respect of the laws, that justice is on Serbia’s side and that one day it will win. Unlike Milosevic, who talked about the historical rights of the Serbs, that it must not be allowed that what was conquered in the war to be lost during peace and that Serbia guided only defensive and just wars and that everything that was happening was pressure from the West in order to weaken and destroy Serbia, but Kostunica used a different vocabulary. He said it was legitimate to discuss any changes, but any change regarding Kosovo or anything else in Serbia should be made in accordance with the constitution, without pressure from outside, and even if that constitution only protects the rights of the majority nation, and that majority fed with nationalism and chauvinism would never allow any changes. In fact, he and others like him claim to this day that Yugoslavia broke up only because the separated republics and provinces did not respect the constitution.

This kind of nationalism is even more dangerous than Milosevic’s open nationalism. His ultimate goal is the same. To prevent changes and society in the name of some right and justice to be held confined and isolated, and to declare the injustice to the fewer and more unidentifiable norms according to the constitution and law.

In political theory, this conservatism was called “ridiculous conservatism” by Edward Burke, which leads to revolutions and changes through bloodshed and violence where everything could have been different. Revolutions happen to societies, he says, who “refuse to change in order to preserve”. And the courage to accept the necessary changes is the only guarantee for the self-preservation of society from violence, protests and revolutions.

Ivanov and the new Gordana are advocates of this “ridiculous conservatism” and “Balkan legalistic nationalism”.

That’s why they support each other and expect the new Gordana to finish off what was not completely ruined by Ivanov, by continuing his policies.

They both were reactivated in politics after being absent from it for years. And it is well known that former politicians are like bombs left behind by the war. No one knows when they can be reactivated and the damages they could cause. We saw the damage from Ivanov. Now it’s the new Gordana’s turn.

She initially declared the opposition VMRO-DPMNE party as reform-oriented because she accepted to be a “non-party candidate”, or in other words a “candidate above all parties”, because without the party’s support she would have remained a “political model”.

And in her first promotional video, she said she was running for the presidential post because “Macedonia needed a voice of reason, a voice of law and justice and a voice of European values.” In other words, she quite immodestly told us that she is the voice of reason, the voice of law and justice and the voice of European values.

For starters, it’s not a bad thing to have a positive opinion of yourself.

But the new Gordana must know that in her absence, Macedonia has changed quite a bit, against the will of her friend Ivanov.

If she is entering the election race with the ambition to restore the “lost name of Macedonia” and to reverse international agreements with Greece and Bulgaria, if she is entering with ambition to annul the Law on Languages ​​and rule as a one-party president like Ivanov; if she has the ambition to put in prison all 80 lawmakers who voted to change the Constitution because, according to her, they committed a crime with this act, then neither the famous revolutionaries from her family nor her grandfather Stojko, whom she called for help, would be able to help her.

She will only be remembered as a “political mannequin”.