When you take a rotten cherry and try to take out the worm and the rotten part of the cherry, it is quite likely that all you will have left is the stem. It’s the same when you inherit a criminal system and are trying to “gradually” reform in “phases”, to get into the matter, to catch the rotten parts and to try to replace them with a healthy tissue, you will become just like the worms that were previously eating away the cherry, but you will just continue eating away the system. Perhaps somewhere along the line you will make a change, part of the system will heal, if the implants “grasp” the healthy tissue. If not, so much of the “reforms”.
The scandal with the book “Young Poets” shows much more than irresponsibility from the head of the Agency for Youth and Sport. An experienced publisher, significant for the cultural wealth of the country, told me that he is hearing about this “project” of the Agency for the first time, while the project had been running for several years. In some way, the responsibility for this miserable anti-cultural incident is shared with the previous managerial cadre. Or maybe the new, reform option (with and without quotation marks, however one prefers) is responsible for not revealing the recent practice, for not stopping it and for not introducing a new one, according to the interests of the young people and the free society “for all”?
The questions that need to be answered now are in terms of the entire project for the “significant” publishing for youth. Who thought it up? How many and which people were implementing it? How much money did they spend for these “legendary” publishing projects? What did they contain? How many “great poets” do we have like the one from Resen, who applied under another name in order to meet the age criteria and nothing more than that? Were only party poets receiving awards?
Following those answers, the new director must give an answer as to why he decided to continue the “vmro” practice. He also must answer whether the fantastic circulation of 5.000 copies is usual, approved by inertia by the new director (why the hell?!). Where was that absurd waste distributed, in what context and with what purpose? How much money did the printing and distribution cost? The public is expecting for the procedures of approving projects, commissions, tenders, calls for proposals all to be precisely described – in short – all the criteria for implementing the entire procedure, in details.
What has to happen now is for answers to be given to all questions raised and unraised in regards to the practices of the (still) vmro little agency, which obviously has a lot of money, since it can print books in copies that are ten times more than, let’s say, the editions of the publishing house “Ili – Ili” with the most renowned Macedonian and world names.
And – those responsible for the abuses and wastefulness – must return the money! There is nothing simpler than that.
And, the chat about this “small” scandal refers to everyone, absolutely everyone, and to the darkest corners of the system. The endless spiral of abuse, wastefulness, crime and corruption has to be stopped! The system will not improve on its own just because there are new people at the head of the institutions. Even if they are the most honest, if they allow the old song to be sung, the crime will return in a great deal, as some politicians are announcing, with other words, of course.
The question as to whether the director knows what an editor is comes at the end and will serve us for morning jokes with the second or third espresso…
At the end, we have the “insignificant” questions. Has the Agency, now or in the past, recalled that prescription drugs cannot be found in pharmacies after the first working day of the month? That the youth are desperate…Functionally illiterate. Whose youth is crippled? They’re not interested in poetry, even if it is international, they just want to move abroad and never return.
