Author: Xhelal Neziri
“In Aracino there is no cantonization, there is sanitation.” So wrote in his Facebook profile the leader of the ruling SDSM, Zoran Zaev,posting pictures of excavators opening a sewing channel. Down this post there were opposing comments from residents of Aracinovo, village near Skopje, predominantly with Albanians, where SDSM wins: you cannot be glorified in the 21st century with a sewing canal. But, also with lots of “likes”.
For the people who do not live in this village the canal issue is vain, but for the residents a serious problem. Industrial and wastewater have been the source of various diseases. How many Albanian officials have pledged to resolve the issue, but have forgotten that it was vain.
And there is Zaev, the former Prime Minister, who again wants to win votes from ethnic Albanians in North Macedonia with this channel.
The phrase “there will be no federalization but sanitation” was used by Zaev in 2016 in response to VMRO-DPMNE allegations that “it has accepted agreements with the Albanians on federalization of the country”. This phrase is at the same time synonymous with the SDSM’s articulation of issues forgotten by Albanian parties, which usually deal only with major topics. In this way, Zaev entered the race for votes of ethnic Albanians, with promises of: an average salary of 500 euros, a minimum salary of 250 euros, new jobs, sanitation, water supply, clean air, clearing wild dumps.
The problem is the lack of creative offers by Albanian parties. They do not offer genuine and uncompromising fight against corruption, or departization of education and administration because they use these phenomena to win elections, and do not offer solutions to the tangible problems of the Albanian citizen as they consider them “minor issues”. “.
Defining the human needs of Albanians and linking them to political action is a philosophy that has been lacking and continues to be viewed with pessimism by Albanian political movements. The lack of real-politics as a philosophy of political action among the Albanians of North Macedonia has brought consequences that are already visible and tangible. According to credible research, since 2006, 200,000 Albanians in North Macedonia have left their homeland and fled abroad. So more than a whole city. Reason: unemployment, education and degraded health, prospects, nepotism, destruction and institution’s robbery.
The politics of ideologies of great causes, of ghettoization and conservation, set in abstract pathetic dimensions, must be replaced by real, concrete, pragmatic politics. The political focus must be on the human being or the Albanian as human beings, who have rights guaranteed by laws and conventions to cultivate cultural, ethnic, religious identity, but also have rights to employment, a good standard of living, conditions good education and health, modernized agriculture and livestock, a developed economy and a state where peace and security will be guaranteed by NATO and the EU.
The politics functioning based on the principle of the real citizen’s needs of North Macedonia and on the obligations of the state towards them as taxpayers would shift the open inter-ethnic issues to a clearer political dimension, where their solution would be easier since it would be seen from a practical and pragmatic point of view, not from an ideological one. Only with such a repositioning of political factors can North Macedonia become a state with a functioning democracy and equal citizens in all respects.
The first step towards installing this political philosophy are precisely the pre-election coalitions between the Macedonian and Albanian parties, made on the principles of programmatic proximity and prior arrangements for state leadership. These coalitions would produce real bids not only for “national” issues, but also for “futile” ones. / PSC