Volkswagen would never come to a corrupt state

Aleksandar Nikoloski

The prestigious Bloomberg has announced that Volkswagen will officially invest in Turkey. It also announced that Macedonia had not entered the final phase of the decision at all. A news that almost went unnoticed. I wonder if society has gotten used to bad news and failures that it no longer wants to hear about them. Is it so frustrating that no one wants to hear yet another bad news? However, one has to and must know what is going on, in order to draw lessons from it for the future and draw conclusions how it should not be done.
And it definitely should not be like this. One should not work as this government led by Zaev does, or does not. Because, as I wrote earlier, corruption is booming and the economy is sinking. And it should be known that these days Volkswagen has officially announced that the company will open their new big investment in Turkey. The company is investing a fantastic one billion and four hundred million dollars invested there – to compare, all investments in Macedonia in four years cannot reach this figure – the company opens over five thousand direct jobs and twice as many indirect, 15 thousand families will find their happiness, their employment. They will produce over three hundred thousand cars annually mainly “Passat” and “Skoda Superb”, which will seriously increase Turkey’s gross domestic product and foreign exchange inflow as most of them will be exported.
What is particularly intriguing is that the Volkswagen information given to Bloomberg says that in the final phase it was taken into account alongside Turkey and Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania and North Africa.
With this, Volkswagen confirms that Macedonia has never entered the final stage of selection, let alone the plant being built in Macedonia. So, unfortunately, Zoran Zaev was lying when he said in January that the decision was not yet made, and even abused the name of Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Policy Adviser Hecker. But lies always come to light.
And to be fair, Volkswagen didn’t take Macedonia into consideration because they hear and know that corruption is booming, that firms are being blackmailed for money, that they are being offered “strategic partners” who would take half the company for free, Volkswagen knows that the entire government is sinking into crime and corruption, and therefore does not want to even consider it, let alone invest in Macedonia. That’s why we need change! A quick snap elections will lead to a capable VMRO-DPMNE-led government that can solve problems. That is why these days we set out to hear what the people are expecting from a government and what they want, making the first time in the history of Macedonia an interactive program that will put the requests and projects above everything else that the people will ask from us at these meetings.
VMRO-DPMNE wants to know what kind of problems people are facing, the goal is to find out the problems that the citizens, their families face, in the streets, in every village, in every city throughout Macedonia. Talks on “Rebuilding Macedonia” are meant to look citizens in the eye and find out what troubles they face and promise to fight together for problems to disappear or be reduced.
Each of us should join in and help Macedonia stand up to the challenges and begin to develop.
A team of VMRO-DPMNE experts will offer solutions to the problems we detect, and these solutions will be part of our pre-election program that will be offered at the upcoming early parliamentary elections.
We will provide an answer to every problem. We will visit every settlement in Macedonia to meet with citizens, to hear their problems and to create solutions together.
We talk to the citizens about all their suggestions and ideas for the new program. Macedonia needs to be an economically strong state, citizens want an economically stable state, a better standard of living, better education, affordable healthcare, new job openings, new investments, new schools, new infrastructure projects, increased wages, and increased pensions.
Young people want new and higher scholarships, lower taxes, startup projects, support for young couples, tax breaks, they want a secure future. Young people see Macedonia as a digitalized and advanced country. Digitalization, modernization of the state is needed. Unemployment is forcing young people to move out of the country, new jobs are needed, new projects for young people. Above all, we should do our utmost to make them stay here, in their home, and see their happiness right here.
In this constellation, when we do not see any answers to these key challenges, any hiding of Zaev’s government behind major international processes that are strategic to Macedonia is merely an abuse and dishonesty.
Right before the summit of the European Union leaders, I finally hope that Macedonia will get a date to start membership negotiations. It will be good for everyone. But, unfortunately, I have to say that the best we can expect is conditions that need to be realized and even negotiated afterwards, or date for a date. Those conditions will be all that this Government has not done – fight against corruption, a sustainable system of rule of law, improvements in the economy, and political inclusiveness and dialogue. Those conditions will be the best proof that we must hold snap elections. If this government had the capacity to deliver all this, it would have delivered it these past three years. A new professional and dedicated government is needed to meet the challenges and get the country back on track.