What we are fighting for?

Gordana Popsimonova

I am very angry at myself. I feel cheated, played, deceived and hopelessly naive. As a little kid, who, contrary to his own temper, strives to be peaceful, not make trouble, to learn, to obey, to do their best and … ultimately not get what was promised or expected.  Or as adults who leave the comfort of their own homes and the profession they want, to catch up with an authoritarian regime and to bring their personality, honor, pride and dignity to the mockery of various media like “Kurir” and similar ones, to let them encircle their faces in the photos of the protests, to go through their privacy, threaten them with messages, be in constant conflict with their surroundings, make their relatives angry at them, lose friends, abandon their comfort and peace, and in the end they will not get what they asked for – honest authority, which will deliver freedom, justice and democracy.
Guys from SDSM, what were we fighting for? For parliamentary travel costs of one thousand euros a month? For some of the same people to be accommodated in several management and oversight boards with 200/300 euro flat-rate sums? For director posts in public enterprises intended for party staff, whose only guarantee of competence and expertise is the party membership card?
How will they think of party members of various commissions that share day fees and surpluses? Or, for those South American first-class trips to see how adventurous tourism looks like? Or for racketeering firms from various security agencies that present themselves as close to you?

And that happens, I can see and hear it, and it makes me angry. And that’s why, SDSM guys, I have to tell you a couple of important things. I don’t care how much it is going to hurt you.

First! Guys from SDSM, you did not defeat Gruevski with your programs, ideas and projects. To be honest, you did not have them. You killed him with Zaev’s “bombs”. And behind them, behind the wiretapped conversations, are few noble and brave men who risked their health and lives to bring the monstrous face of the previous government out in the open. Did you at least say ‘thank you’? Do you know who they are and did you ever think of ways to repay them?

Second! You guys from SDSM, you did not destroy Gruevski as a party. You were no good. Your party was a mess, from internal factional fights (thanks for asking – now more visible and more numerous than ever), and from being too lazy to make an effective and efficient strategy for mobilizing citizens, which is from the systematic destructive effect of VMRO-DPMNE. It is a public secret that a huge part of your current ‘hawks’ had good (maybe even fruitful) cooperation with the party that is now in opposition and which they unanimously insult.

Third! Guys from SDSM, at least half of the votes, with which you won 49 MPs on December 11 2016, are not your members. As at least half of those who protested in the past three years are not your members. As at least half of those present at the biggest anti-government protest in May 2015 were not your members. As 90 percent of student, professorial, high school, or journalistic plenums that have raised civil resistance were not your members. You just stuck as flies to the already articulated civic activism, giving it party colors.

Fourth! Guys from SDSM, that you have incorporated part of the NGO sector or from the “Colorful Revolution” into government, is not an alibi for a bad start. Your start is terribly bad. All is one scandal following another scandal, and it’s all about petty corruption nonsense. And for the long-awaited and all possible fanfare announcements of deep reforms in the judiciary, the security sector, the administration or the media that are reduced to shallow furrows, I will not even waste my words on this. The reactions of reputable experts who are members of them are sufficient.

Guys from SDSM! I and thousands like me, following the circumstances and under the pressure of the situation, we found ourselves on the same side. We tied our fate with your party and we were where we were supposed to be, to do what was to be done. When it was hardest. That’s why, we ask only one of you – not to be like them.

That is what we were fighting for.