I would not talk very academically about what the civil society sector is and what its functions and roles are in society, because there is an extensive literature on that. I would like to briefly say how much the civil sector can influence the changes from personal experience and the experience of the organization that has existed for 20 years, through an example where we started from a real problem of the citizens of Macedonia and that is the functioning of local self-government within of those changes, as one of the very important segments of the local self-government, said Aleksandar Nikolic Pisarev at the panel discussion of CIVIL on “What is the role of civil society organizations in socio-political processes?”
The specific problem I want to talk about is the village of Bashino in Veles. It seems a bit morbid, but when we worked on the territory of all of Macedonia, and I want to say that that project was awarded as the best in the period 2017-2018. When we met the people in the field, we actually saw the chaos of the local self-government in the Republic of Macedonia and after 20 years or so people were very lucky that someone opened the problem.
By breaking through the highway, the village cemetery of the village of Bashino was cut off from the village. People had a problem how to bury their loved ones. In order to perform that act which should be dignified, they should be passed through the water pipe to penetrate to the cemetery.
I could not believe it when they explained it to me, it is something unthinkable in a civilized world. We made a lot of noise, we made a short film about the functioning of the local communities.
What is very important in the functioning of the civil society sector is that we have to get rid of the personal vanities and the vanities of the organizations that we are the most important and the best and so on. And it is very important now that the civil society sector is established in Macedonia, the sectors that work are differentiated, networking is very important. Networking is best demonstrated by the current platform of civil society organizations to fight corruption.
