The North South of the East

Zvonko Davidovic

I’ve been thinking for days what to write in my next column that I needed to submit by today, or more precisely what to write about in my next column when the topics on the news portals and the media are already dated, boring and worn out. What are you supposed to write about in a country where the same events have been repeating for decades, the situation is devastatingly the same, stupidity and dumbness are inherited, the crime and the robbery are privatized, the society and the state politicized, and the only thing that changes here is the name.
We sat down in a tavern with friends, the waiter came to ask for our order and we said- Why don’t you suggest something. The waiter straight away said that he I’ll bring us a little ajvar, a little piece of feta cheese, some yellow cheese, a little pindjur, a little makalo, and some bread for starters. One of my friends looked at him suspiciously and told him: “Don’t you see how big we are, okay bring us ajvar, cheese, pindjur and roasted bread with fried bacon, without the “little”. You might be a little man, but we are grown man so bring us the food, and hold the “little”.
Well, little Macedonian, until you become just Macedonian even the waiter will see you as a person for half a serving. We are champions in changing names, therefore Biljana is always Bibi, Eleonora is Eli, Miroslav is Miro and Aleksandar is Ace. Only in our country we address each other by using terms such as “uncle” and “aunt” instead of sir and madam, or at least with “comrade” as we did in the good old days, when everything was peaceful and more beautiful. “Uncle”, what time is it, the younger passerby asks you, you look at him and wonder – you neither know him nor his father, so how come he refers to you as his father’s brother then, or his uncle? And why just his father’s brother, you could be his uncle from his mother’s side. Immediately after getting to know someone, the address you as if they have known you for years, although this is the first time you see them, you barely know their names, and when you address them in a more respectful manner they begin to look around as if you are talking to someone else.
We have always started and ended reforms with changing the name, so from the Republic Judicial Council we created the Judicial Council of RM and from the Republic Public Prosecutor we created a Public Prosecutor of the Republic of Macedonia. Content, incompetence, politicization and irresponsibility remained the same, the only thing that changed is the name. The same is happening in every segment of the state and society where only the names of the parties that come to power or the officials who sit in their comfortable chairs change, but not the mode of operation and behavior. Incompetence and laziness are reigning, and the only thing that matters is denials. The mayor was not getting drunk with belly dancers, this is what they call a mayoral observation of the local service activity with consumption. In our country, we call tycoons businessmen, we call criminals heroes, political opponents – traitors, and we have a series of abusive names for those who think differently.
We are world champions with our skills and artful ways of not improving the poor condition even when everyone is trying to help us, and we never call things by their real name. A negative report on the situation in the country for us is a report that unrealistically reflects the situation that is much better than what is seems, that is, it is a tendentious report with a goal to harm us. Any criticism or different opinion gets a name and is called biased reporting in order to destabilize the progress. Reinhard Priebe’s report named some high-ranking officials in the judiciary as “an elderly man’s ramblings”. We name the wiretapped conversation as the “bombs”, and the UBK operatives turned into the “yellow vans”.
Bombs of evidence have become clues, and from clues they have become a good basis for cross-party bargains. The Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO), from hope and faith in the future in which senior officials are not above the law, has become an institution for revenge. Amnesty has become a tool for resolving political needs and a solution to the political crisis. Why, when we change the names of things ourselves and never call them by their real name, we wonder about changing the name of the country? Why not be North when a mayor from the cafes calls himself Juncker, and when, besides the North determinant, we are still far from the South, let alone the North, lost somewhere between the East and the West.

Views expressed in this article are personal views of the author and do not represent the editorial policy of Nezavisen Vesnik