Eurasia Press & News
No one seems to care about the beaten woman. Instead, those who performed their civic duty are in the dock while their attackers – who clearly pulled strings – remain at liberty.
Their escape from justice is hardly unusual. If they are off the hook because of kickbacks and political influence, that is only because many people in Macedonia know that that is how things get done here.
No wonder that Macedonia features at the bottom end of Transparency International’s 2005 Corruption Perception Index, alongside African states with abysmal records, such as Swaziland.
Sadly, nobody seemed very surprised when I recounted the story that I had heard.
Too often, the response I received was, “So what? Things like that happen every day. You seem to forget where you live.”
This may be the case. But we should not accept that this will always be the way things work in the country, not least because it is so illustrative of everything that continues to pull Macedonia down and away from its European future – casual violations of human rights, widespread corruption, inefficiency, lack of transparency and poor coordination between various government institutions.
“The court will probably acquit us, but this was not about us in the first place,” my injured friend said.
“The only option we have if we want to see justice is to file a complaint against the police and then go through a whole new cycle in the courts. I can’t deal with that.”
“It makes you realise,” he added, “that if something like this can happen over such a petty little episode, they can set you up for anything.”
In other words, if you are stubborn and persistent enough to shed light on wrongdoing, you will soon stumble across “well-connected officials” – and any attempt to challenge the system will result in trouble for the whistle-blower.
The result is a muddily upheld rule of law that generates enormous mistrust in state institutions and a general fear of the system, rather than faith in it.
With this in mind, the cold, legal words of the EU’s message to Macedonia – which said that “considerable and sustained efforts will be necessary to consolidate the rule of law, to fight against corruption and to make further progress in the areas of public administration reform and respect for human rights” – sound very appropriate.
For too long, we have known all about the flaws of the system in Macedonia but have somehow taken them for granted. We don’t recognise that we need reforms because they will make our lives better. Instead, we accept them because the EU demands them.
Macedonians have a right to be happy that Europe has finally accepted them as a future bona fide member.
At the same time, Macedonians need some sharp reminders of just how long a road the country has yet to travel before it can say that it is truly part of the European family.
