Rasko and Jordana

Gjorgji Spasov

In an old Serbian joke, Risto asked Jovan. “What would you be, Jovan, if Vuk hadn’t invented the word J? – “I would be Ovan*” (*Sheep in Serbian) – said John and asked: “What would you be, Risto, if Vuk had not invented the word R?” – “Isto*” (*Same in Serbian) – answered Risto.

This is how the first presentation of presidential candidate Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova looked like in the TV show ‘360 Degrees’ on TV Alsat M. She, is in the style of a very educated person with a pronounced cynicism and astonishment that people like Vasko Poppetrevski “cannot understand even the simplest things”, with an practiced eye-roll and shaking of her head, asked her former student, and now host of the TV show, how would he feel with a changed identity and be called Rasko instead of Vasko, and immediately added that she would feel like someone changed her national identity if instead of Gordana they suddenly started calling her Jordana.

Vasko’s attempt to confront her with the fact that Macedonia was not renamed from Macedonia to Racedonia or Jakedonia was in vain, but that the country accepted the addition as Siljanovska added her husband’s surname Davkova to her name, which would be one of the conditions of being married. But such arguments don’t help great people of the likes of genius Gjorge Ivanov. Their task is to prove that “this criminal authority” has changed the name of the country and the identity of the Macedonian nation out of pure ignorance and that they have the “sacred duty” to dismantle this “regime” and to correct that injustice.
It does not help telling such people that the nation’s language remains Macedonian and international agreements are already signed in that language. For them, that language also has “an addition”. It’s not worth explaining these people that nationality is written in the United Nations as “Macedonian” because they will start a debate on the difference between the political and ethnic nation. And it’s not worth telling them that the Republic of North Macedonia remains the only independent country in the world that has the word Macedonia in its official name because “the exclusive right to use the word Macedonia was retained by the Greeks.”
The presidential candidate, in fact, is having some kind of street quarrel with Prime Minister Zaev, not with her opponents, because, just like a second version of Hristijan Mickoski, she does not choose her words about the “scandals created by the current government”, starting from the election of Talat Xhaferi as Parliament Speaker, up to the disrespect of the will of the citizens in the referendum, the forced change of the Constitution, the amnesties, the pressure on the judiciary, the nepotism and the “Machiavellian rule”.
She attends rallies and on each given occasion she repeats that we had the right to ancient history and past, and for the Skopje 2014 project she had only aesthetic remarks. And that Zaev should have been arrested after the events on April 27, not those who tried to kill him. Zaev was not sufficiently politically literate and that was the only reason he was so liked abroad. That Zaev was the “female Katica”, and that she was a saint and similar nonsense.
But apart from being turned into “intellectual support” for explaining the “darkness” that Mickoski speaks of, and the promoter of Macedonia as “the failed state”, she goes around and promises that, if elected, she will restore the old name of the country, will annul signed agreements, will change the Constitution, and above all – that she will overthrow the current “regime”, and introduce democracy and the rule of law.
She is persistent in claiming that the name North Macedonia is unacceptable for her. These days, accompanied by Gruevski’s associates, she goes “driving around in a car” and says: “I promise you that I will never utter the name North Macedonia. And please take my word on this promise.”
The woman of which one can freely say she has “a mouth full of the Constitution” and builds a scientific and political career on the principle that the Constitution must be respected, in fact, states: “I will not respect this Constitution and I will not respect Macedonia’s internationally reached agreements until they are changed in accordance with my view of things.”
Such promises are at least scandalous, or hypocritical.
It is scandalous that a presidential candidate, even before the start of the election campaign, claims she will not respect the Constitution, although she certainly knows that, if she is elected to the office she is running for, her first task and the condition for entering that faction will be to swear in and sign a statement before Talat Xhaferi and before the MPs in the Parliament that she “will respect and defend the Constitution of the Republic of North Macedonia”.
Such a statement would be hypocritical if she thinks of promising one thing, then do something else in case her lie turns out successful, and get to the position of head of the state by a classic deception.
Someone well noted that nowadays when university professors are running for the country’s presidency, they often treat journalists as their own frightened students who, if dare to ask something inconvenient, they say: You should know that. Or even more arrogantly: I’m surprised that you do not know this, that for instance “a reasonable compromise means a reasonable compromise”.
Siljanovska-Davkova, also, when journalists ask her if she saw the awarding of her husband with a duty-free shop as nepotism at a time when she was a minister in the government – she replies: “Well, I did not influence that decision. That decision was made by the Ministry of Interior, in which the then minister was my colleague from the University, Ljubomir Frckovski.” In other words – I had no knowledge of it. And according to her, this is not the same as what Silvana Boneva and Mira “Diesel” Stojcevska were doing. And not just that. According to her, it was not fair to ask the same question a hundred times. She wanted to say what she would do as the head of state, not what she did when she was in power.
Asked if she thought it was nepotism when Hristijan Mickoski was employed at his father’s faculty and the fact that he was his father’s assistant in the same subject – the presidential candidate responds: “I don’t know, you should ask him. It’s more of an ethical problem, not nepotism.” As if nepotism has nothing to do with ethics.
Vasko Popetreski had a serious problem facing the presidential candidate that calls herself a “great intellectual mind, recognized throughout the world” with a number of illogicalities and absurdities in her explanations and intentions as a possible future president.
Siljanovska-Davkova has created the illusion of herself as the “great reformer” that will build “scientific capitalism”. But first she will overthrow “Zoran Zaev’s regime”, then the Constitution and the Prespa Agreement, the Friendship Treaty with Bulgaria, the Ohrid Framework Agreement and some other minor things with which we have become the “failed state”. According to her “great intellectual mind”, this was exactly what Europe wanted from Macedonia, and not what Zaev and Dimitrov offered.
She said that as an Othodox Christian she respected the VMRO anthem, according to which “VMRO is our fate”, but she will also seek support from Stevco Jakimovski’s Grom for these important reforms, since only Stevcho knows how to sing “Stronger than fate”.