Canadian singer Leonard Cohen, who passed away ten years ago, left behind the legendary song “DANCE ME TO THE END OF LOVE,” which many consider a hymn to love. In reality, despite its beautiful title, the song was inspired by the greatest horror the world has ever experienced — the Holocaust. In the death camps, string quartets were forced to play while innocent souls were suffocated and burned. Cohen, himself Jewish, experienced the horror of that deranged ideology of a mentally ill “leader” in an exceptionally traumatic way.
Half a century later, during the horrific war of the so-called “Islamists” in Syria, countless women, men, and children endured unspeakable suffering — murders carried out in miserable ways, rapes, people thrown from buildings, and more. This is no longer a matter of political analysis but of medicine. It created a massive wave of refugees that moved toward Europe.
Orbán’s police dealt brutally with such a vulnerable mass of exhausted refugees, showing them they were not welcome in Hungary at any cost. Numerous children died from the cold, trapped in barbed wire erected by Orbán’s regime. A few years later, Freedom House declared Hungary the first “non-democratic” country in the EU. Orbán even justified Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which was condemned by all leading European states.
At one point, his minister Péter Szijjártó even threatened Ukraine with military force, allegedly “to protect Hungarians in Transcarpathia.” On another occasion, he referred to the Croatian coastal city of Rijeka as a “Hungarian port.” Such people had self-proclaimed themselves gods and were no longer even human.
Orbán strongly consolidated ties with numerous right-wing leaders within and beyond the EU, including Vučić’s Serbia, Republika Srpska, and Macedonia. Until Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Orbán enjoyed strong backing from several European populists such as Janez Janša, Andrej Babiš, Mateusz Morawiecki, and others. After the Russian aggression, however, he was left alone against everyone. Now, in all pre-election polls, Orbán is a thing of the past. Elections are less than two months away, and Peter Magyar’s opposition party “TISZA” holds a solid 10 percent lead. Magyar’s party enjoys strong support, especially among young voters. Orbán’s populism no longer sells, partly due to three years of economic stagnation. The opposition “TISZA” promises to unlock billions of euros in frozen EU funds.
Hungary currently faces high fuel prices, prompting many Hungarians to fill up their cars in Croatia, giving rise to a joke by Croatian Economy Minister Ante Šušnjar: “Apparently your ‘cheap’ Russian oil becomes expensive at your gas stations.” Orbán gave Hungary a false glorification that now resembles genuine humiliation. Through constant lies, he and his associates built their own heaven in the sky while creating hell for ordinary people on the ground. History is full of examples where cheap leadership has cost entire nations dearly.
Macedonia Without Allies?!
Soon the country may be left alone in a dangerous and turbulent world. Even friendship with the “Serbian World” is not guaranteed. To believe that Vučić’s Serbia can best take care of Macedonia is like believing that a wolf can best take care of a sheep. For years, its small “leaders,” in their efforts to become great leaders, have in fact undermined the country’s future. For a long time, some “leaders” kept their minds in their pockets and their morals in safes. Unfortunately, they continue to do so even now, when even the great powers act with extreme caution. Soon Orbán will be gone, and Vučić as well. Dodik has already struck a deal. And we continue without a compass, stubbornly heading into the unknown, unaware that every lost day is a day closer to disaster. We keep ignoring the possible and praising the impossible, unwilling to understand that in geopolitics fate shuffles the cards — and we must play them.
Far behind us should be the times of utterly absurd illusions that the white race of the world originated from a “local proto-tribe called Macedonians,” narratives that circulated in national media as a mixture of fantasy, comedy, and tragedy. Fantasy can be fatal if we do not know what to compare it with. Unfortunately, political rotations in our country have differed only in geopolitical orientation, while internal deformations have almost always remained the same. To achieve the incredible, one must do the impossible. Yet we are not even doing the possible. Even after 35 years, we still lack a merit-based system — the alpha and omega of any forward movement. We spend one billion euros annually on redundant administrators and fictitious employees on temporary contracts. The effective damage exceeds two billion euros per year, if we consider that such a billion could be redirected into the economy.
It Is Obvious We Do Not Want to Be in the EU!
Our “arguments” demanding recognition of a Macedonian minority by Sofia serve as an alibi for not implementing the agreement with the EU, namely the inclusion of Bulgarians in the Constitution. That is the real position. It would have been different had we joined the EU before the Bulgarians; then we could have dictated conditions. But through stubborn obstinacy, we remained last. Now everyone climbs onto our neck. Tomorrow Albania may do the same. We must understand that the EU is not a superstate but a union of sovereign states. The EU maintains high standards of ethnic rights. Yet there is also Greece, which does not recognize minorities at all (though it has Turks, Albanians, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Vlachs). Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania also have minority issues, but due to fear of Russia they move cautiously. Our demand that Bulgaria recognize a Macedonian minority exceeds political expediency, unless there is some other agenda behind this mask. It seems the government hates the EU stars! And that is collective suicide.
If we were not friends with madness, we would have long been in the EU — since 2004, or at worst since 2007. We have lost almost half a century for what should have been done on time. As an exit strategy, we invented early elections. We turned every electoral victory into a historic defeat. Every delay carries penalty interest, and we are seeing it. It is not far-fetched to conclude that the government does not want us in the EU because we are a private state of five or six oligarchs who would lose their “ownership” if we joined. Perhaps someone thinks it is better to care for five individuals than for an entire nation. We have already proven ourselves capable of profound anomalies. Our “underground” destroyed everything living above ground. From the second most developed country in the region (among 17 states of Eastern and Southeastern Europe), we are now last. Someone has worked in the name of the people and for their own account. Well-intentioned people have repeatedly told us that international politics is not a wish list but a list of difficult tasks that save destinies. Otherwise, no one can guarantee that we will not hear “Holocaust music” before some crematorium of states. The spirits of hundreds of thousands of our young people and children will never forgive us for driving them from their homes, forcing them to live better somewhere else in the world than in their homeland.
In life every mistake is paid for — but some make it, and others pay for it. It is known that where stupidity flourishes, wisdom immediately withers.
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Analysis by Macedonian publicist Mersel Bilali in Libertas