Polyparty-ism - Search for Common Ground

others" enjoy the benefits from tax revenue,
the grey economy is in the hands
of the ethnically defined mafia, members
of one ethnic community are
sacked so the "others" can be
employed, until we come to the old
saying, "If I can't have it, you won't
either." Under conditions of enormous
unemployment, poverty of catastrophic
dimensions and a lack of economic
progress, there is no room to discuss
improvement of interethnic relations.
The need for survival and elementary
existence force people into isolated
groups defined by ethnicity and prepare
the conditions for a new conflict.
And, finally, the last stroke to cut
the branch we are sitting on: the
"killing" of the young generation. In the
post-conflict period, there wasn't a single
issue handled with such consistency,
insistence and dedication, as the
destruction of all chances for the new
generation to find a way to communicate
among themselves, to meet somewhere,
to respect each other, and (God
forbid!) to fall in love. In that action,
parents, educators, state structures, parties,
media, religious communities and
some nongovernemental organizations
are included. Schools are divided, faculties,
bars, playing grounds are divided.
Banners, demonstrations, art,
speeches, organizations.
They all serve to use children and
young people as a tool of interethnic
impatience and obedient soldiers for a
future conflict.
(The author is a legal advisor)
Wounded dignity
never heals. Those
who cause the
wounds forget them
quickly, if they
notice them at all,"
as a French intellectual
would have
written. That is
exactly the feeling
that encircles and
worries all of us in
Macedonia, especially
after all that happened
to us in 2001.
Many of those who
are faced with such
feelings are probably
asking themselves: Is
Macedonia going to
survive; is there any
future for
Macedonia? To
make things easier
for us and for those
who are still torturing
themselves with
such dilemmas (some
of them are even
under sedation), we
should give one
explanation: THE
FUTURE IS A
GRAMMATICAL
FICTION, some
would add: …OR
UTOPIA
Gjorge Ivanov
Macedonia and
the future!?
"Wounded dignity never heals.
Those who cause the wounds forget
them quickly, if they notice them at
all," as a French intellectual would
have written. That is exactly the feeling
that encircles and worries all of us
in Macedonia, especially after all that
happened to us in 2001. Many of
those who are faced with such feelings
are probably asking themselves:
Is Macedonia going to survive; is
there any future for Macedonia?
To make things easier for us and
for those who are still torturing themselves
with such dilemmas (some of
them are even under sedation), we
should give one explanation: THE
FUTURE IS A GRAMMATICAL
FICTION, some would add: …OR
UTOPIA.
If we try to present the future with
some kind of plan, project, party or
government program (programs we
are waiting for so impatiently these
days), we will face some unexpected
surprises: we can't see the future
clearly from the present. On the other
hand, if we ignore the future and leave
it in dim unpredictability, then we
might face the danger of these fictions
becoming our unbridgeable hindrances.
Wise people, who have seriously
dealt with such issues, are suggesting
one possible preventive -the ecology
of ignorance- distinguishing between
the different layers of recognized
ignorance and the ignorance that
"doesn't exist" simply because it is
unrecognized. The unrecognized
ignorance that we face in "post-
Ohrid" Macedonia is, actually, what
we should be concerned about.
"Evolution has always had a
destructive influence," wrote
Luhman, trying to explain Kun's thesis
about the dim discontinuities of
evolution: "Once-present attitudes can
only be reconstructed by means of
many deduced fictions, there is simply
no other way to do it." Taking into
account "discontinuity of evolution"
the question about Macedonia's future
can be answered neither from a transcendental
point of view (that our destiny
was "written in the stars") nor in
a positivist one, in which we would
discover the future conditions of the
state while still in the present, as if the
present were a seed of the future and a
97
A new beginning, November 2002