Why does everything have to stop? Both work and criticism, everything stops. And if you happen to do something, then you have the press centers (read: factories for fake news and propaganda) to put that in the function of sabotaging the referendum.
The referendum has knocked on every door. Yes, really, the issue is way too important to leave people indifferent. Even those who are trying to remain as much as possible far away from politics, will understand that they are called on to participate in the big decision. But what does all of that look like?
The bots and black campaign that have been working full steam for years now, and especially intensively since the first “bomb” on the crimes of Gruevski’s government burst, will play the final episode of their infamous and dirty role. Gruevski’s fall showed the very first day that Macedonia is turning its face towards Europe, but it also showed how much this country is important for those who are enemies of Europe, and care about the Balkans just as much as they do for the dirt under the fingernails.
Now, when the people who live in this country or originate from this country (Diaspora) are faced with a major question, it seems as if life has stopped. It’s as if it’s a matter of life and death, if possible – death.
You can’t say anything, without it being brought in connection with the referendum. You can’t do anything nice, anything bad, and for it not to be put in function of opposing or favoring EU and NATO. For every news there is at least one fake news, and a mountain of hate speech. All issues and topics, interethnic relations, economic policies, education, government tenders, NGO frauds, landfills and sewage, health care, tourism, corruption, languages and flags, traffic…
Everything you can think of is put in the same referendum basket. There is no connection between one another, it doesn’t matter, it has to be seen through the referendum lens. And yet these, on the other hand, are foggy and smudgy, nothing can be seen through them from the squalling of the bots, from the ignorance and unaccepting of facts. I ask myself, does the Russian-VMRO propaganda really have to do that at all. Typical Balkans spitefulness, selfishness, thoughtlessness, obliviousness, stubbornness and laziness are big enough enemies of the progress. And there are more than enough.
This shallowness and inability to separate the important from the not important, the related from the unrelated, is astonishing, not to say disappointing. Obviously, this little public of this little country, of this tortured and frustrated society, can’t face the complexity of life, to set the issues one by one, to resolve the problems one by one.
Media literacy has become an empty phrase repeated to unbearable boredom, but in reality it doesn’t exist. But we will speak about this in some other occasion.
If the government or the parliament just aren’t good enough, then there are elections. If the economy is going in a downward line, then the strategy is changed. If interethnic relations are getting worse, then measures are taken and processes are lead for their improvement. If health care is in a devastating situation, if tourism is producing bad results, if there are questions regarding the use of languages – then you work on them. Successfully or unsuccessfully, but you work on them. However, that is not the case here.
The referendum is being waited on as if it were judgement day. That day is being awaited, and then the signs of life will stop. The only thing important is for the referendum to (not) succeed, and then there can be a cataclysm.
Hang on people! Life is more than a referendum.
Hence, it’s unnecessary to say that it’s about a referendum at which we need to decide whether we will accept the chance for a more beautiful, European life, safer and more secure, and not on whether we should commit collective suicide. In the meanwhile, children will be going back to school, ajvar will be made, and the student dormitories will start to fill up. The referendum is on September 30. Until then, there is enough time to read, hear and think about the benefits, and to take responsibility for the future. And to vote. I know that this doesn’t suit the pro-Russian propagandists, but life belongs to us, and not to the architects of the black campaigns.
There, I also know how to be in a good mood. Ohrid has a positive influence on me.
