Polyparty-ism - Search for Common Ground

The Donors Conference came and went, the
social problems remained
Money Doesn't Grow on Trees
Mirche Jovanovski
"The Donors Conference is the
best proof that there isn't any spring
war offensive", almost cried the
President Boris Trajkovski on the
joint press-conference with the
Austrian President, Tomas Clestil,
on May 11 of this year in Skopje. He
also appealed at the same time to the
businesspersons from that membercountry
of the European Union, to
invest in Macedonia. In this honest,
and a little bit emotional gust of the
Macedonian
President,
practically lies
the point of
the future
development
of Macedonia:
peace and
investments.
Perhaps it
sounds too
much like a
slogan but it is
the formula
that the country
can draw
out of the political madness in
which corruption, crime, social misery,
common insecurity, distrust and
unhealed wounds of last year's war
conflict reign. And of course, the
construction of institutions that will
carry that out. On the contrary, there
is a greater possibility for the country
to be joined with the group of
countries for which the African
standards apply and to the number
of 1.2 billion people, who, as it is
The fear of a spring war offensive is smaller, but instead of
the wanted economic offensive, an offensive of the socially
deprived can easily happen
estimated, live in extreme poverty,
instead of joining the European
Union. With that President
Trajkovski and the Finance Minister
Nikola Gruevski had the opportunity
to be informed in detail on the
first Conference of Financing the
Development, which was held from
the 19 to the 23 of March in the
Mexican city Monterey, under the
auspices of the Organization of the
United Nations.
The fear of a spring war offensive
is smaller, but instead of the
wanted economic offensive, an
offensive of the socially deprived
can easily happen. Money, that is,
doesn't grow on trees. No matter
how much the domestic politicians
try to put the results of the donor's
conference in their account, this
won't help them enough in the talks
with the everyday bigger number of
the social cases. Even worse, the
present Government showed that it
doesn't know how, or doesn't even
want to talk to these despaired people.
Instead of talks, it delivered
whacking to the few thousand angry
workers whose enterprises, where
they have been registered as
employed, are threatened to be
closed, while, the workers do not
ask for nothing more than work and
an honest valorization of their labor.
Since they do not want to talk
anymore, it can hardly be expected
from our officials to ensure conditions
of any kind for the economical
effectuation of these enterprises and
an atmosphere where every employee
would feel at least a little dignity
and that what he has obtained he has
earned honestly, and not that somebody
gives him charity. From a government
which has been branded as
corrupt from several reports produced
by relevant international
organizations, it is questionable
whether there will be any different
behavior at all.
The outburst of social dissatisfaction
happened almost a month
later from the donor's conference in
Brussels where, to everyone's surprise,
Macedonia was promised far
more money that even themselves
had been asking from the rich club
83
What is happening to us?, May 2002