As I type this, the TV is showing live coverage of the first Sahara Balkan Peace Festival organised by the company of the Indian billionaire Subrata Roy and under the patronage of the Macedonian Government. The state elite, all decked out in formal attire, was just addressed by the most expensive speaker of the day, Tony Blair, and just before him Nikola Gruevski. I’m waiting to see who gets the Champion of Peace prize. Gandhi and Mother Theresa get quoted all over the place. What is this about? I don’t know whether to laugh, fume with rage or be frightened. Namely, the Indian billionaire who appeared in Macedonia early this year was presented bombastically by the government as a great investor taking over cattle raising in the east of the country, investing millions in the construction of a luxury resort on Lake Ohrid and, of course, erecting the grandiose monument of Mother Theresa in Skopje’s main square. He is wanted in India due to a final court decision that found he had cheated hundreds of people for payments of over 4 billion dollars. Few show any concern while his investment plans are publicly glorified. And now, here he is organising no less than a Balkan Peace Festival. Who else from the region is in attendance? No one, of course. Why in Macedonia? He explained it nicely yesterday, he said that for years he had nurtured this idea and was looking for a country where it could be implemented, a country of peace, love, a country without corruption. And finally, he found it. This is not a joke. I am not joking in the least.
Last year, Macedonia was marked by a severe conflict between the government and the opposition. We have been living this tension for a few years, but now the conflict has overtaken literally everything. All social processes have been subsumed under this settlement of accounts, or they are completely ignored. The conflict culminated on 24 December 2012. In the midst of a heated debate about the new state budget, the government to respond to the filibustering[1] of the opposition by bringing the secret police into the Parliament to physically remove the entirety of opposition members. That was ten minutes after they had removed members of the press from the gallery. For security reasons, they said. Videos of the brutal expulsion of MPs from the parliament were, I believe, seen throughout the region. At the same time, the opposition had a few thousand protesters in front of the Parliament, which incited the government to assemble the same number of its own supporters. In both cases “the people happened”. So they say. (And what happened to the people?) The risky situation in the streets passed without major incidents. For the next months, the opposition boycotted the work of the Parliament, protested in the streets of cities and ultimately accepted participating in the local elections with significant involvement of EU mediators and on the condition that a committee be formed to report on legal violations in parliamentary practice on that day. The elections were mostly won by the ruling parties, and a comment regarding the conclusions of the committee was given by one of the participants, MP Ilija Dimovski, who likened the significance given to the report to that given a box of Kleenex. Either way, the report has been issued, noted remarks regarding the procedure are now waiting to become operational. A bitter aftertaste is left by the fact that almost all documents following the large-scale skirmishes in the country were produced with strong mediation by outsiders, mainly people from Brussels or Washington.
Another important event in my opinion was the absurd arrest of reporter Tomislav Kežarovski from Veles (special police in full gear, early morning, cameras…). The ludicrous charges were that an article he published in 2008 had revealed the identity of a protected witness in a murder case. Information known to the public indicate that the man did not have the status of a protected witness until the next year, and a little later he himself publicly admitted that police inspectors had coerced him into giving false testimony against someone accused of murder. In the meantime, Tomislav Kežarovski’s detention was extended five (!) times. In response to pressures from international (they have long since ceased paying attention to national) press and other associations, the government said they did not interfere with the work of the courts and, besides, the trial would begin soon, and a verdict would closely follow.
Macedonia has dropped another 22 places in the Reporters without Borders report on freedom of the media, and in 2013 it occupied position 116.
There were no significant developments in the field of inter-ethnic relations. The general policy – each to (rule) his own – continues. Ethnic homogenisation and physical segregation continue with intermittent disruptions holing up the trend. In my opinion, this is the worst course for Macedonia since, in combination with the general climate of lack of understanding for different opinions, it does not promise a good outcome. A few months ago I participated in a discussion in Tetovo. A discussion among people who were all practically of the same opinion there was a strong undercurrent of discounting who was what. Implying that ethnic and religious identities were unimportant. Come now, who cares about what you are, that is unimportant. I argued that it was important, that people here were in constant conflict along these lines, that we have a long history of conflicts, that, after all, the war happened along the same lines, and that the identities set up in opposition to one another should be examined, not ignored. I still have this dilemma. How far should we take the respect for the needs and ambitions of these identities. Is there an end to such ambitions, a point where they are finally realised, not endangered, where “enough now, we’ve made it, let’s go on”. Is that point the 30 meter tall statue of Alexander the Great of Macedonia in the centre of Skopje or the 50 meter long Albanian flag along the motorways in the west of the country? Where is that point? Does it even exist?
Yes, there are some other small points in time and space where we can openly and amicably discuss important matters to do with us. Outside the media and public eye. It’s probably better that way.
Public debate, critical thinking and contextualising events have all but disappeared. Everything boils down to uniform propaganda. It goes so far as completely creating an event to be distributed. Such as the Balkan Regional Peace Festival without anyone from the region in attendance, organised by a billionaire from India, with Tony Blair as the keynote speaker, and with dance groups from India dramatising Gandhi’s revolt against the gilded stage of the new 45-million-Euro theatre. One big nothing, nicely wrapped and gaudily decorated. A completely new level of manipulation. Oh, right, the Champion of Peace for this year is Jeremy Gilley from Peace One Day. During his acceptance speech he said he could not believe he received the prize. I can’t believe it, either. I can’t wait to see which company will be organising peace festivals for us next year. Coca Cola, perhaps?
[1] Filibustering is a parliamentary procedure whereby debate on a proposal is dragged out and where one or more MPs can postpone or completely hinder voting on the proposal.