“After so many years, we managed to achieve an agreement with Greece, but, unfortunately, we did not manage to make an agreement among ourselves. I reflect on the fact that VMRO-DPMNE and SDSM did not succeed to agree on a referendum question, let alone something more. It is sad that we missed all these years as a civil society to talk about patriotism, especially when the former government was in power when there was a division between patriots and traitors” highlighted Aleksandar Krzalovski from MCIC, at the panel discussion “Patriotism – yes! Nationalism – no!”, organized by CIVIL – Center for Freedom.
“With the Agreement with Greece, we once again come to the situation of who is a traitor and who is a patriot. I think that if the parties mutually agreed that we would have a better agreement, now I am sure that there will not be a better agreement than this one, because the positions are announced. On the other hand, it is good that we have an agreement and we are now facing a tough choice to weigh whether the benefits of the agreement for EU and NATO membership outweigh the sacrifice we are making” stressed Krzalovski.
“We conducted two surveys on the referendum, and one of them indicates that there is stable support “for” the referendum, about 41% percent, but it is not enough for the census of the referendum, even though 58 percent said they would go out to vote… In Brexit, out of 65 million, 45 million had registered that they would go out to vote, but only 33 million went, about 12 million did not go out to vote. At the end, the result was 17 against 16 million, so those 17 decided for 65 million citizens” he emphasized.
“Unlike Brexit, where the citizens decided “for” or “against”, here an opportunity to boycott arose, primarily because of VMRO-DPMNE’s indecisiveness. The second survey showed that the number of citizens who will boycott increases, namely, 29% to be exact” said Krzalovski
He called for the citizens to exercise their right to vote, no matter how they vote.
“The vote “for” will probably win, but it is uncertain if a census will be achieved” added Krzalovski
Text and camera: Dehran Muratov
Editing and photography: Biljana Jordanovska
