CIVIL Media spoke with Petar Bogojeski from Macedonian Concept about his views on the internal and external factors and policies that are helping and hindering the EU integration, the political constellation after the elections, and the possible solutions for resolving several issues among the opposition ranks and the relations with Bulgaria.
CIVIL MEDIA: What are your assessments regarding the political situation and processes following the early parliamentary elections that took place during a pandemic?
Bogojeski: Overall, everyone is analysing the elections from their perspective. It’s much better to talk about the elections when you’re not a direct participant, and since our team, the entire team of Macedonian Concept and myself were direct participants in the elections, anything said could be biased or in our interest. After the elections, most important is what is the main goal of our country, and that is the EU integration. We are directing all analyses and future activities toward that goal. We are part of NATO now, and should become a full member of EU. On that path we see many friends, both domestic and foreign factors helping in that direction, but also many opponents or policies not going in favour of that goal. Both internal and external. Those that are internally most problematic, and that being the emergence of new, unreasonable ethno-nationalism, primarily manifested by DUI, and that strange competition between – conditionally said, the Albanians or leaders of the Macedonian Albanians, that is, of the political parties that carry an ethnic sign, and which are competing to send a bigger nationalist message, thus winning votes among the ethnic Albanians. Especially the epoch non-sense of promoting direct discrimination along ethnic lines, which is the distributing of money from the budget of the republic on ethnic grounds, or imposing on the private sector what language one will use in their company. And that’s a part of the government policies that go opposite the European agenda.
Here we must not leave out also the opposition, which is like it’s constantly shooting itself in the head and working against itself. And unfortunately, these elections too showed that it’s very difficult to have a reasonable European opposition. The election result confirmed VMRO-DPMNE as an essential and necessary factor in the direction of a change in the opposition, nevertheless that’s how the citizens voted… They gave us 1% of the confidence they gave VMRO-DPMNE, I am talking about the citizens lists where we went under the brand Macedonian Concept. Along these lines, everything that means anti-European, pro-Russian, and even Bolshevik politics of VMRO-DPMNE, are directly contrary to what means European integration of the country.
In terms of to external factors helping our country and that are friendly toward us, Bogojeski points out Greece and their support for our EU integration, and considers Bulgaria as one of our enemies, following the Memorandum of Sofia sent to the EU member states, thus considering that Bulgaria has unilaterally terminated the good- neighbourly agreement between the two countries.
– In the external factors we gained a new friend, Greece, whose national interest is to support Macedonia to enter the EU and to preserve the Macedonian originality on the Balkans, especially the Macedonian Slavic entity, as different from the other Balkan entities. However, we gained and new-old, now I can freely say, enemy, unfortunately, and that being the Republic of Bulgaria, whose agreement for friendship and good-neighbourliness we supported from the very day of its signing, which I call it the Ilinden agreement. And that agreement as well as all those events in 2017, 2018, were quite favourable for Europeanization of the entire Balkans. I can freely say that the Macedonian-Bulgarian relations are a hostage to the interests of the mafia. Those in Bulgaria encouraged the birth of new winds of distrust and hostility towards Macedonia, and resurrected that Bolshevism or forgotten Zhivkovism in Bulgaria, says Bogojeski.
As to the changes in the social and political sphere in our country, Bogojeski says that changes can be achieved if citizens vote at elections, and that the low percentage of voter turnout of citizens who are politically neutral or are not aware of the changes they can bring, have contributed to the return of the same political entities and the strengthening of their positions and power. He believes that the society in our country is not living in a real democracy, but in a controlled one, and he explains this with the way the elections results were announced.
Bogojeski points out the irrationality of VMRO-DPMNE and Hristijan Mickoski’s failure to take responsibility for the poor election result, VMRO-DPMNE’s captivation from that Soviet bloc as direct destabilizers and obstacles on the path to EU integrations.
-The big parties agreed, suspended the system and after three days published the agreed results, as it suited them. The destabilizing factor is a direct consequence of the internal ethno-nationalism. VMRO-DPMNE is a huge conglomerate. It’s a party that Gruevski left with 4 thousand votes and 147 thousand members. Now it’s dropped to less than 50 thousand members, meaning to 30%. But even in those 30% there are certainly good and quality people who can bring serious changes and contribute to normalizing of the political scene, first in the country, to gain credible and quality criticism toward the government. What was to be reforming of VMRO-DPMNE, unfortunately, ended only with the change of Nikola Gruevski, but not also with essential completion of the processes. Now it’s already late for that, and I, with the best of intentions and most sincerely, suggest a new process, and that is redefining of VMRO-DPMNE, from a movement that is a complete chaos in the party that Gruevski left, into a union that will incorporate all elements in itself. Even the pro-Western, advanced elements of the party, and those, I would call – lost souls, Russophiles or Bolsheviks, carried away in some sort of Pan-Slavism or some Orthodox unity that is always destructive for us Macedonians, and a group of antiquated Macedonians who are full of negative energy, says Bogojeski among else.
Diana Tahiri
camera: Atanas Petrovski
editing: Arian Mehmeti
translation: N. Cvetkovska
