Angels – seraphs would shake it to its foundations, the communist architecture they would crush! Or, at least, they would inflict a heavy stroke upon it, an anti-communist stroke. So say the creators of the “work of art” for which the outgoing government has so far spent two million euros of people’s money (and, according to recent experiences of the crazy fair “Skopje 2014”, it is totally prepared, through annexes and additional agreements, to throw away an extra million!), and which is just another caricature part of the new face of the Macedonian capital.
The city as one Croatian writer and journalist called it, the “triumph of losers”, which could “be described as a mix of Las Vegas and Pyongyang, but also with a touch of Halicarnassus, Ashgabat and Styrofoam Rome from the movies with Charlton Heston”, our, once beautiful Skopje, has been transformed with our own money into a nightmarish mess, by its haters, due to their fear of the City. Stirred with kitschy backdrops for horror movies and their knowledge on architecture, acquired from highly intelligent exchanges of theses on the differences between Baroque and Classicism, in front of village convenient stores…
The City, “which is crazier than the most insane idea of the Turkmen dictator Saparmurat Niyazov”, what once used to be our Skopje, with these and similar “works of art” has become “famous” around the world, while the cheeks of its normal citizens burn with shame every time a foreigner visits, to whom they have to explain the hallucinogenic project of “Crazyland”.
And as if the Triumphal Gate(?!) and the megalomaniacal monument of Alexander the Great (for which they quickly regretted and renamed them) were not enough, the government of Gruevski and Ahmeti also put up “stylized” supposed “baroque” stands and kiosks (one of them is a peculiar complement to the shockingly mishmash structure dedicated to Mother Teresa), furthermore, transformers-lions, Prometheus in undies, a “brothel” near “Putnik” and albino – Cento, for now, at the “Sloboda” Bridge railings, and “bronze candelabra in the form of angels with outstretched wings and lamps between them” on the relief elements. Generous Skopje had paid an amazing amount of 260,000 euros for placing the candelabras, after having wildly spent 1.7 million euros for the development of the railing, its realization and installation … Holding strongly to the armchairs, the Macedonian rulers, according to some media, have huddled amidst Skopje part of the series “Game of Thrones”, as if they really do not know how to spend citizens’ money in an increasingly more poverty-stricken Macedonia!?
It is time to put a stop to such unscrupulous spending of budget funds! Especially for projects with which the arrogant clique in power is offending the intelligence, the education and the good taste of citizens. Whatever the outcome of today’s talks in Brussels, the new government, until and after the April elections, must focus on the real needs of the citizens, the shattered public health system, insulting compensations for beneficiaries of social welfare, crippled education and neglected science…..
And of course, it needs to immediately devise a plan for at least a partial return of the hundreds of millions of euros thrown into the abyss of satisfying one’s passions and promoting a foolish plan on building new national consciousness. Whether it be through the dislocation of the kitsch monuments in an amusement park (like a monumental memory of a specific time-troubling time, in Krivolak, for example), which would attract foreign tourists, or through the sale of polystyrene, concrete and bronze – wholesale, whatsoever. Demolishment is out of the question for now, due to huge waste and pollution! However, dislocation is fine, just so that the shame may be rinsed off a little and the soul of disfigured Skopje returned…
Even the youngest, secondary school students – victims of revenge of past poor students, and especially bearers of the latest “Macedonian Spring” – students who today survive in the misery of dormitories, are already aware that even their grandchildren will be paying the debts for the wild “projects” and for the ultimate irresponsibility of the arrogant government of VMRO-DPMNE and obedient DUI .
Everything has been clear to us, the older and more experienced, long ago.
For the angels-lamps, and for the thievish project for destroying Macedonia as a democratic state…
Sinisa Stanokovic
