“All nonsense seeks an alibi” – in Skopje the tone hardened before the Bulgarian veto – World

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From the expected VMRO-DPMNE of Bulgaria, through the Russian interests that openly express “United Macedonia”, to the ruling party of Prime Minister Zoran Zaev and related media, hours before the Bulgarian veto for the start of negotiations with the sentiment of the EU against Bulgaria in North Macedonia. for the first time in years, they correspond to the image that the Sofia authorities are trying to defend as the truth about Skopje’s attitudes.

Zaev’s opponents

The sharpest statement a few days ago came from the pro-Russian United Macedonia, whose leader Yanko Bachev called for a boycott of the referendum to change the name and which has repeatedly (though not proven) been linked to Russia’s positions in North Macedonia. . Bachev called on the two Deputy Prime Ministers, Ekaterina Zaharieva and Krassimir Karakachanov, along with Andrei Kovachev MEP, who has expressed strong support for Sofia’s policy, to be declared “persona non grata” and expelled if they set foot in Macedonian territory.

The call for the non-parliamentary party did not find a place in many Macedonian media, unlike the comments expected from the VMRO-DPMNE opposition.

Its president, Hristian Mickoski, has spoken out against any change in the constitution on a possible agreement with Bulgaria (something that is not actually on the agenda of the Sofia-Skopje talks) and the recognition of a Macedonian minority in the country neighbour. It is the problem of the “Macedonian minority” and Skopje’s need to ensure that no state policy will work in its favor that is one of the concerns in Sofia, but the Macedonian government has said it understands the problem and is willing to reaffirm it. that there are no internal political claims against Bulgaria (although the term “Macedonian minority” is still not mentioned, but to speak of territorial integrity).

Mickoski cites the decision of the Strasbourg court, which ruled against Bulgaria for registering two organizations with such claims, drawing the ire of the Bulgarian government. He interpreted the position of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the words that Bulgaria must “respect the decisions made by the court”, although the ECHR does not require the registration of associations.

For his part, the former Foreign Minister and Chairman of the Foreign Policy Commission, Antonio Milososki, demanded that the Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs, Nikola Dimitrov, be heard in parliament or resign over the blockade of Bulgaria. Milososki accused him of maintaining the illusion of a date for negotiations, and did not feel the least responsibility for Sofia’s veto.

Cousins ​​of Zaev

These and other VMRO-DPMNE positions, which contained inaccurate allegations, also appeared in publications close to the party. At the same time, the ruling party hardened its tone, both through Zaev’s Social Democrats and through the nearby “Free Press.”

“We will not befriend the Bulgarians. There is no need to pretend to be nice when obviously (the Bulgarians) knew from the beginning what they were preparing for us,” Lyubisha Nikolovski told Focus. Neither Zaev nor Dimitrov should pretend to be friends with Boyko Borisov and Ekaterina Zaharieva, who will probably leave the political scene anyway, but the consequences will linger after them, Nikolovski continues. He draws attention to the fact that “Zaharieva gives lessons according to European criteria” and, with the veto, Bulgaria places the union in a “servant role”. The criterion of “good neighborly relations” during the admission of new members started from “a condition without which it is impossible”, “an ultimatum with which everything is possible”; Perhaps Bulgaria’s behavior is the reason why the EU regrets that it continued with enlargement in 2007.

Another well-known commentator, Sasho Ordanoski, reacted to Zaharieva’s words that the glorification of Josip Broz Tito (who ruled Yugoslavia mainly after 1944, when Bulgaria said that the “common history” with North Macedonia was coming to an end) it had no place in the EU. He wrote in the same newspaper: “As the day to formalize the veto of Bulgaria on our approaches to European integration, the futility of Bulgaria’s position is increasingly evident. Yugoslav history and the time of one of the darkest dictators: ¡ Titus! “According to him, Skopje must prepare for the cooling of Bulgarian-Macedonian relations. The question Ordanoski asks Zaharieva is whether she realizes that the dispute will henceforth be channeled through Facebook and Twitter, which favor the deterioration of bilateral relations, “or is that what she wanted to provoke.”

According to him, and Ordanoski is known for her sharp tongue, Zaharieva displays a “striking political inferiority complex, probably the result of a lack of confidence in her own” romantic historical positions “on Macedonia” and, if so far, ” out of decency. ” Macedonians thought they should be sensitive to Bulgaria’s “historical upheavals”, this changed when integration fell victim to the internal and endless accounts of Bulgaria’s “Russian agenda” in their country.

Bulgaria’s tone towards the Macedonian people is harmful, in fact the world “has no natural nations” and the term “is not related to blood and DNA, but is related to a historical process that creates a related sense of community. with language and culture, “he said. Minister Dimitrov TV Thelma. The tougher of the two deputy prime ministers, commenting on the issue (the other is Chancellor Bukhar Osmani), Dimitrov accused Bulgaria of not investing in good neighborliness and not doing “good neighborly deeds”, speaking of a “nation fictitious “. According to him, “there was such a comment in one of the conversations and I said exactly that it is harmful to my people.”

Skopje Mayor Petre Shilegov, one of the former MPs on the night of the storming of the Macedonian parliament a few years ago, popular with the SDSM, also entered into a dialogue with the Bulgarian authorities in absentia, attacking Zaharieva for commenting on the glorification of Titus. “Every nonsense seeks an alibi, and Zaharieva’s position is nothing more than nonsense,” he told Television Europe yesterday:

Thus, Shilegov commented on the allegations of Zaharieva and Karakachanov that he participated in an act of honor through an exhibition of Belgium, which he attended in the capital, and it is not a matter of celebration.

However, the mayor of Skopje also addressed historical issues, defending the position of official Macedonian historiography on Bulgarian rule in Macedonia during World War II, a week after a ceremony marking the day of the liberation of the “occupier Bulgarian “in your city. When asked by Georgi Koritarov to comment on what he looks like in the Bulgarian office when speaking not of an occupier but of a Bulgarian administration in Macedonia, he sarcastically replied: “My city has lost 5,000 people during the administration. 950 of them are fighting against the administrators, as you call them, and the rest are civilians. “