The night is dark if your light is off

Gjorgji Spasov

After the change of government in May 2017 and after the name referendum in September 2018, the presidential elections will be the first serious political clash between the two strongly opposed political forces in Macedonia.
A new president of Macedonia is formally elected, but essentially we will decide on the direction in which we want Macedonia to move after these elections. Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova and Stevo Pendarovski are just personalization of the two essentially opposing views on what has been achieved in Macedonia after the change of government and in what direction the country should move in the next period.
Unlike Stevo Pendarovski, who is supported by all ethnic communities in Macedonia and who wants us all to move forward together so that the integration process of the country is not replaced with isolation, Siljanovska-Davkova is a typical representative of the undefeated part of Gruevski’s regime, who has remained in power to this day in the form of Ivanov, and who opposes all the changes that have taken place since the formation of the new government.
That part of Gruevski’s regime, which nominates her in the presidential elections under the slogan “Justice and Righteousness”, in fact, calls for political revenge for the lost power. He wants to bring Macedonia back to the very beginning of negotiations with Bulgaria and Greece before the Colorful Revolution, before the formation of the SPO, and before promoting Macedonia as a society of equal citizens.
Will it be allowed by those who won in 2016, who won the local elections in October 2017 and those over 600 thousand citizens who voted to support the name referendum, it depends on how aware they are of the great importance of these elections. They should all realize that we are not electing a “new ficus”, nor is it a “fight between two bald men over a comb”, that is, a pointless battle, as some conspirators of a boycott of the right-wing parties claim.
Mickoski and his team of modern rebels say they do not seek support for their candidate because he, that is, she has the capacity for a dignified political representation of the country at home and before the international public, the capacity to increase interethnic and social cohesion in the country, be the supreme commander of the army or to help Macedonia’s accession to NATO and the EU. They offer a candidate who will oppose all the policies of the current government, and will do everything with the help of the power that she would have to take away the power of the current parliamentary majority and the government, as well as to cancel the already reached agreements with the neighbors, which are recognized and welcomed by the entire world, but she doesn’t.
Presidential candidate Siljanovska-Davkova couldn’t wait for Monday to declare that the first day of her campaign for president in Ohrid would be the beginning of the end of the legitimately elected government in Macedonia, and thus define her mission and goal.
Although this seems foolish and ridiculous, this policy of “seeking presidential power in order to overthrow the government” is not a bit naive either.
The new leader of VMRO-DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski, through his candidate for head of the state, actually offers the return of Gruevski’s regime in its most rigid form.
VMRO-DPMNE with its campaign tried to mobilize Macedonian nationalism in the form of hatred against Albanians, which VMRO-DPMNE blames for failing to save power in 2016, and their candidate declares that she does not need the votes of Albanians, nor Macedonia as a society of equal citizens.
They are aware that as a country we have swallowed a bitter pill in order to get out of the dead-end street and move ahead, and they are playing with people’s emotions. Despite all the facts, they persistently manipulate that with the change of the Constitution we have renounced the Macedonian people, language culture and history, and with the Law on Languages ​​we have threatened the use of the Macedonian language and the unitary nature of the country.
Although they already lost parliamentary and local elections with the same accusations and manipulations, they are persistent in repeating these manipulations.
They are now offering themselves as saviors from “the bad government”, from the “darkness that surrounds Macedonia”, from the injustices that NATO and the EU do to us, from the geographical determinant North in the name Republic of Macedonia, which they supposedly would never have accepted.
They were always in favor of “a reasonable compromise” with Greece, but they never said what they mean by it and how it could be achieved. You will never hear from them why they did not make a better compromise with Greece in the 11 years while they were in power, or hear them explain how they would do it in the future and with whose support in the world. They only know that they could solve the problems of the country better, and promise some justice and righteousness if they are entrusted with power. They are in fact in favor of a Brexit of Macedonia even before the country becomes a member of NATO and the EU.
According to one of the protests that led to the coup attempt in the Parliament on April 27, and a member of the top management of the party that nominated Siljanovska-Davkova as president, Toni Mihajlovski, all those one million and two hundred thousand registered voters in the Voters List who “boycotted” the referendum on the name, showed how much they hate everything that the current government is doing, and calls for a vote for their presidential candidate to demonstrate that hatred, for things to go in another direction, because his hometown Kumanovo hasn’t been a free town since 1938.
Their candidate for head of state, who advertises herself as an expert, activist, vegetarian and rocker, once declares that the Constitution must be respected until it was changed, and the very next minute she asks us to take her at her word that she will never say “Republic of North Macedonia” and that, if elected as president, she will not even sign a declaration for respecting the Constitution of the Republic of North Macedonia. Neither will sign acts or laws passed by the Parliament with that name of the country, as Ivanov is currently doing. She, in fact, promises a conflict, a blockade of the Parliament and the Government, and embarrassing Macedonia in the world if elected, with statements that she does not recognize the Constitution of her own country, the name of its country and the internationally signed agreements.
Such a thing, it seems, can only be stated by someone who is sure that she will never be elected to that office. Someone who has accepted only the role of a propaganda tool for power-shift with the help of a bunch of lies and manipulations.
And therefore one needs to be careful about these elections. We should be careful not to get a bad stepmother by electing a “mother of the nation”, justice to be replaced by injustice, and the light that has appeared on the road to NATO and the EU will be turned off. At midnight In Ohrid, and in the whole country, it will be dark, if someone’s light bulb is off.

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