Global Voices » Macedonia

Macedonia: British MEP Tweets His Emergency Landing at Skopje Airport

Filip Stojanovski — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:03:21 +0000

A drama in the air over the Skopje airport received an immediate reflection via Twitter, after a successful emergency landing.

On the night between February 10 and 11, an airplane of the Czech airline CSA first circled for 40 minutes trying to get the dysfunctional flaps to work, and then performed an emergency landing. The pilot managed to stop the plane at the end of the recently extended runway.

Among the passengers were the British Member of the European Parliament Richard Howitt, and the Macedonian Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikola Popovski. Within the EP Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Howitt serves as the Rapporteur on Macedonia - and he is also an avid Twitterer. He tweeted immediately after the incident:

All now fine but just had emergency landing at Skopje on aircraft whose flaps failed. Told take brace position. Thought could be the end.

Richard Howitt MEP tweeted immediately after touching ground.

…and added some more details:

Emergency landing. Snow on runway. Fire engines lined up. Stewardess said: “pray, pray, pray.” #Czech Airline staff heroes. All OK now.

A report by MIA (a Macedonian state news agency) provided more details:

As the plane was landing, smoke appeared from the tires and the captain managed to stop the aircraft right at the end of the runway.

Howitt later commented:

…I didn't know at time about smoke. Told Foreign Minister: give pilot medal for stopping plane

Quite a few people re-tweeted Howitt's info and wrote to express support and relief. Mallen Baker wrote:

Glad it ended well - nightmare situation that anyone flying would prefer to avoid! Great that everyone safe

Extension of the runway was a part of the deal with the Turkish company TAV, which renovated and manages the airports in Macedonia through a 20-year lease contract.

While the cited flaps malfunction might have nothing to do with the weather, the ongoing Balkan snow storm does affect the air traffic in the region. A few days ago, the Macedonian Army helicopters that were supposed to carry supplies to the cut-off mountain villages could not take off [mk] due to continuous snowfall.

Macedonia: Coping With Ice and Snow in Skopje

Veronica Khokhlova — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 02:00:15 +0000

GV Author Filip Stojanovski posts pictures of Skopje's snowy and icy streets and reports on his blog: “[…] the pavements and the side streets in the municipality of Centar remain icy. Some are covered by layers of ice or re-frozen slush, by old frozen snow, or an unevenly hardened mash of snow and 'salt.' Fokus daily claimed that the authorities avoid declaring nationwide state of emergency in order to ‘prove' that they were prepared for the snow.”

Macedonia: Pondering Future Consequences of ACTA

Filip Stojanovski — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:19:31 +0000

While the authorities in Macedonia remain silent on the country's stance on the ACTA, bloggers, such as Airborne, emphasize the need to gain more knowledge [mk], as the traditional media mostly ignore the issue: “Maybe, one of these days, we'll just simply wake up in the ACTA-ruled world.” The new media attempting to fill this gap in local languages include Metamorphosis and IT.com.mk. Endek blog advocates [mk] standing up for Internet freedom by joining international protest movements.

Macedonia: Problems With Transparent Online Reporting of Air Pollution in Skopje

Filip Stojanovski — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:51:19 +0000

According to the blog of GreenBox NGO, Skopje's city government is not interested in providing funds for the online system that informs citizens about the current levels of air pollution.

The automatic system for measuring pollution, located in the center of Skopje, caused quite a stir when it reported alarming levels of air pollution last year.

Some observers related the presence of the cancerous PM10 dust particles to the government-funded construction boom in the Center municipality, which had been turned into a giant construction site through the Skopje 2014 project. The surrounding area is also an epicenter of the activities of the so-called “urban mafia” that uses connections within the local government to change zoning laws and convert public parks, parking lots and small houses to huge and profitable apartment blocks, office spaces and shops.

The “Skopje Breathing” online system [mk], owned by the City of Skopje, stopped functioning at the beginning of January 2011 (1, 2; mk), after several media outlets (1, 2, 3, 4; mk) reported that the air quality was still poor. The webpage displayed this text: “Software upgrade is under way. The application will soon be available.”

Screen shot of Skopje Breething monitoring system, which is 'in construction' since early January 2012.

GreenBox blog posted [mk] the following:

Would you like to know about the quality of the air in the center of Skopje? Then you need to put on your snow shoes, parka, hat, scarf and gloves and trek to Macedonia Street to check the information by looking at the display near the Šmizla [equivalent of the Valley Girl or Barbie-girl stereotype] statue. The website “Skopje Breathing,” which published a live data feed until Christmas [old calendar = Jan 7], is still not working, and most likely will not work in the future.

Air pollution measuring station (right), Šmizla statue (left). Photo by GreenBox blog, republished with permission.

The environmental lab of the company Farmahem, which maintained the system for a year, confirmed that the issue at stake is more than a software upgrade. Their contract has expired, and the City of Skopje has not initiated a renewal. Farmahem allegedly wanted to upgrade the system with a public archive with the measured data, but now the citizens need to turn to the city government, which decides the destiny of this online transparency tool.

The City of Skopje representatives seem totally uninterested in ensuring that the publication of the air quality data online continues. The [City of Skopje's] spokesperson Nedelčo Krstevski says that the website appeared thanks to the initiative and goodwill of the company.

“The website was not ours. At the moment we cannot say whether it depends on us or on Farmahem. For us the important thing is that the measuring stations work and that the citizens can get air quality info from displays on the devices,” Krstevski said.

The City representatives admit that for the “Skopje Breathing” to continue working they would need to start a public procurement procedure, which, according to them, was very complicated and included a public tender. They do not know if that is going to happen.

“I cannot tell you anything now, neither that the site will exist, nor that it won't exist,” said Krstevski.

Through “Skopje Breathing” the citizens learned that the air pollution in the capital was up to 10 times higher than the maximum allowed by law. This resulted in recommendations not to go out at all. After the public pressure forced the city government and the Ministry of Environment to send inspections to the nearby industrial plants, the levels of pollution temporarily dropped. According to the research [mk] by the Institute for Public Health, Skopje could avoid 117 deaths and 420 cases of serious illnesses per year if the concentration of dust dropped by a third of the current levels.

Balkans: Online Platform Tracks Reports From Areas Hit by Record Snowfall

Danica Radisic — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:12:22 +0000

Since last week, the Balkans have been hit by massive snow storms, the likes of which have not been seen in over a decade, if not longer. After an unusually long period of nearly no real signs of a typical Balkan winter, last week brought what seems to be non-stop snowfall throughout the region, including the seaside areas around the Adriatic that seldom get any snow.

Men shoveling snow from a street in Sarajevo. Record snowfall has paralyzed transportation in the Bosnian capital, where a state of emergency has now been declared. Photo by Sulejman Omerbasic, copyright © Demotix (5/02/12).

Serbia's national television network, RTS, and other media reported on Friday 3 February, 2012, that a state of emergency has been declared by the government, while citizens have been reporting critical situations throughout the country and that municipal services have been doing a poor job of tackling the snowfall in many urban areas.

In an article titled “Serbia Blocked by Snow, State of Emergency in 27 Municipalities, Recommendation to Call Off School Attendance” [sr], the Head of the State of Emergency Sector of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Predrag Maric, is reported to have stated on Friday:

27 municipalities in Serbia have declared a state of emergency due to heavy snowfall. Maric has told Beta news agency that the most difficult situations are in Sjenica, Ivanjica, Prijepolje, Crna Trava and Surdulica, where the height of snow has reached approximately 2 meters. According to him, power supply is “relatively good,” outages are being fixed quickly and there have been no long power outages.

Maric also announced the possibility of declaring a full state of emergency nationwide, which the Government did on Sunday evening, cancelling school throughout Serbia at least until Friday, February 10, among other things.

Several actions have been organized by the online community in Serbia and the region to fend off the snow and to attempt to regain a functional state in urban areas at least, such as a #lopataup (”#shovelup”), organized by one online community leader, Zoran Torbica, and other local Twitter users.

In the meantime, Al Jazeera Balkans, the recently established regional office of Al Jazeera news network in the region, has joined forces with the team from Ushahidi to set up a platform for tracking verified information on everything from road blocks, power outages to other critical points and information in the entire region.

Ushahidi is an open-source platform for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping, which was also used in Serbia just after the earthquake in Kraljevo in November 2010 to map and track damage in the area.

Haris Alisic, who heads the New Media team for Al Jazeera Balkans, launched the platform on Sunday evening, and many members of the online community, including some of the region's GV authors, have joined the Al Jazeera-Ushahidi team in curating, tracking and verifying reports from the region.

The adapted Ushahidi platform can be located on Al Jazeera's official site, while reports can be sent in by anyone using the following channels:

- via SMS to +387644218661
- via Twitter by using the hashtags #kolaps #sneg #snijeg #lopataup #iskljucenje
- via email to oluja2012@aljazeera.net
- or by entering information directly into the form on the”pošaljite izvještaj” tab on the Al Jazeera page

If you would like to volunteer your time to help map critical areas and are familiar with using online tools, please contact the author of this article, or Haris Alisic via Twitter, or leave a comment here on Global Voices, and we will contact you for more information on what you can do to help. We also ask that you all begin reporting from your area on Twitter and using the above-mentioned hashtags on Twitter, which are automatically collected by the platform and then reviewed and verified by Al Jazeera and volunteers.

Macedonia: “Conformism, Hypocrisy and Opportunism”

Filip Stojanovski — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:24:33 +0000

Human rights activist, journalist and artist Xhabir M. Deralla candidly expressed his view on the role of the civic sector in contemporary Macedonia: “The choir of indolent subjects stands mute. As media get quieter, the stench of the decay prevails. The civil society forgets that media are civil society, too. Civil society seems to forget that they themselves are civil society… I see high walls being elevated between people. I look at my county and wonder. When did it become so difficult to see the obvious? When did ability to speak become a handicap?”

Macedonia: Analyzing Skopje 2014

Filip Stojanovski — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:54:01 +0000

Jasna Koteska published an analysis of the implications of Skopje 2014 project in the light of the concepts developed by foremost contemporary philosophers and other thinkers. Informative and readable, full of juicy details on the use of history to create a new nationalist ideology.

Macedonia: Policeman Who Beat Young Man to Death Gets 14 Years

Filip Stojanovski — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:03:21 +0000

This post is part of our special coverage Macedonia Protests 2011.

The trial of the policeman suspected of beating a young man to death while on duty as the Prime Minister's bodyguard during the celebration of election victory on the night between June 5 and 6, 2011, ended on Monday, January 16. The police officer, Igor Spasov, member of the special forces and the only person on trial for the murder of Martin Neshkoski, received a sentence of 14 years in prison.

The attempt to cover up the murder sparked a protest movement against police brutality, through which citizens of Macedonia demanded justice, including apprehension of all accomplices, command responsibility, and political responsibility. The public prosecutor denied [mk] the victim's family's formal request to press criminal charges against the known and unknown accomplices, such as the policemen who were nearby during the murder and contaminated the crime scene afterwards, as well as those who were involved in the cover-up attempt.

The trial had a dozen sessions that were not extensively covered and analyzed by most of Macedonia's media, which rely on revenue from advertisements paid from the state budget. A notable exception is the portal PlusInfo.mk, which published a retrospective of the case [mk] the day before the sentence was announced.

Justice for Martin blog published a summary [mk] of the first ten sessions of the trial, written by activist Voislav Stojanovski's and first published [mk] by Radio Free Europe:

Igor Spasov's Account

On June 5, 2011, while coming to Skopje from Kumanovo (where he had worked on providing security for the electoral process for 15 hours), Spasov's superior officer gave him an oral command via telephone to continue guarding the Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski [photo 1, photo 2]. Before the incident on the square, he had noticed Martin trying to approach the PM twice […]. These attempts were prevented by the PM's security detail. The third attempt happened near the election celebration stage. Even though the uniformed policemen had warned him, Martin kept trying to approach the stage. Spasov reacted shouting at him, “Where do you think you're going?” - Martin started running away, and Spasov ran after him. Persistent attempts to breach the security cordon were suspicious, and his task was to arrest [Martin] and take him to the police station. When Spasov got near him, Martin tripped on a wire, hit his head on the pavement, and remained on the ground. Thinking he was simulating, Spasov kicked him a bit with his foot. The policeman saw that the young man was unconscious and tried to resuscitate him. Soon, uniformed policemen arrived at the scene and called an ambulance. Spasov told his colleagues that he needed to return to the [VIP] stage, and they let him go, without requesting him to identify himself. […] Later, during the trial, Spasov revealed that after the incident he filed an official report, which was destroyed by his superiors.

Eyewitnesses' Accounts

Most of the eyewitnesses could not confirm that the attacker they had seen was Spasov. Unlike at the time of the incident, in court he appeared much slimmer, with grown hair and beard [photo]. Very few witnesses confirmed his account; most provided quite a different version of the events.

According to them, upon reaching Martin, Spasov hit him in the back with his fist. Martin fell but managed to support himself with one hand. Trying to rise, he shouted “Don't beat me,” but Spasov right away dealt him several lightning strikes in the head with both hands, and then he hit Martin's body with his feet. Some eyewitnesses described the assault's brutality visually, through gesticulations. One of them said that he had seen such bloody beating only in the movies, while another said he could not sleep at night after that. Witnesses who tried to approach Martin were prevented by another corpulent man who identified himself as a plainclothes policeman. Some of them were told, “get lost or you'll get some yourself.”

Accounts of other police officers

The first uniformed policemen arriving at the crime scene confirmed they had spoken to Martin at the stage. After the rush, they were called by people from the crowd, and when they arrived there, Spasov told them Martin got sick. One of the policemen said he did not ID anyone, nor did he ask the people gathered around what happened. According to him, this might have been a mistake. They didn't ID Spasov because he looked like a person from the security detail. They did not notice traces of violence on Martin. Next on the scene arrived a female medical doctor and a nurse, who confirmed the death, but did not notice traces of violence. The CSI squad members who arrived next noticed injuries and defensive wounds on Martin's face and body. They informed the Ministry of the Interior's Operative Center of eyewitness accounts about the chase and physical assault.

Some ten policemen from Spasov's unit who were at the square that night also appeared in Court. Spasov claimed that–like him–they were also on duty at that time. All of them, without exception, denied this and stated that they were on the square as regular citizens, and that their work engagement ended before midnight. Even though these witnesses had the most contradictory statements… they supported the official position of the Ministry of the Interior that they and Spasov work for the day had ended at 23:30, i.e. before the election victory celebration started. During the last session, the Court stated that to qualify the act as “murder” the fact whether Spasov was on duty or not was irrelevant. This ended his efforts to prove that he was at his workplace at the time [Remark: this is related to the issue of command responsibility.]

Experts' testimonies

During [the tenth] session, the reasons for Martin's death were examined. A neuro-psychiatrist and a psychologist stated that Spasov was an extrovert, an ambitious and persistent person, insecure in the area of emotional control. During the event he was mentally capable, and was provoked by Martin's attempt to escape as a challenge to his power. Forensic experts described the over 20 external and internal injuries caused by direct or indirect punches. Cause of death was bleeding in the brain, caused by direct application of blunt, dynamic, fast and short-term force, which excluded the possibility that he died because he hit his head on the pavement.

Prof. Mirjana Najchevska documented [mk] many procedural mishaps during the first session of the trial, related to violating articles 309, 314, 320, 327, 333, and 335 of the Criminal Code by the female judge who acted very friendly to the audience:

failing to provide an appropriate courtroom to enable adequate access by the audience, including the victim's family;
the judges were not introduced, and the sequence of trial elements proscribed by the law was not followed;
the official accusation was not read publicly - instead, the accused was invited to give his account;
there was no official recording of the trial in audio or through shorthand minutes;
the judge in effect warned the accused not to reveal classified information related to his work engagement by telling him this could constitute another criminal offense, even though Article 20 of the Law on Classified Data states that classified information “is no longer considered classified if it covers up a criminal act, overstepping or abuse of function, or other illegal act or deed.”

Before the trial ended, the movement against police brutality organized several public debates. During one of them, an important issue “neglected” by the court was raised. Activist Tamara Atanasoska recounted [mk] on her blog:

[A lady from the audience who presented herself as a professor who teaches criminal evidence subjects to postgraduates] asked where the recordings from the video cameras at the square were? Alongside numerous state-owned surveillance cameras, there are also cameras from private companies like T-Mobile, which can be obtained without problem with a Court Order […]. She also stated that in Great Britain surveillance recordings are “top evidence.”

Deputy Ombudsman was asked if the recordings could be requested, and he responded that it was outside of their competence. As previously the Ombudsman representative commended his institution for doing everything they could, the lady asked if they requested the recordings during the investigation?

The response, as expected, was - no.

Spasov appeared clean-shaven, bald and muscular again while giving his closing statement (photo). He claimed [mk] he did not strike the death blow to Martin's head and pointed at involvement of other policemen: “I believed that the fall caused the boy's death, but if you carefully observe the postmortem photo, you can see that the surface of the bruise near Martin's nose is too big for a fist blow, while the Court did not even examine the option of the previous hit through headbanging…”

Spasov said [mk] that he had his reasons for not telling the whole truth and directly addressed the family. If he knew the youth was wounded, he would have brought him to hospital. He said “God is his witness” and alluded that he was being used as a scapegoat: “…if you look for an accused - here I stand, but if you want the truth, don't look at me!”

After the Court announced the sentence, the movement against police brutality organized a street protest in Skopje [mk], demanding full responsibility for all those involved in the crime.

Protest after the passing of the sentence in Skopje. Banner says "Life > Political Party". Photo by Plusinfo.mk, used with permission

On January 19, the movement “Citizens for European Macedonia” held a public debate on the topic of “Accomplices in the Crime” [mk, full video available within the article]:

According to human rights expert Mirjana Najchevska, the accomplices are all persons who influenced the course of events during and immediately after the murder. These include the public prosecutor and the investigative judge who failed to visit the crime scene on time, and did not secure the area; the policemen who did not detain Igor Spasov, but helped him move the body; and other state organs, involving those persons who tried to cover up Neshkoski's murder. For Najchevska, the act of killing, the investigation, and the court process represent an act of state torture. An indicative fact is that the Court did not declassify the official secret status of police data, even though it could have done it without asking the Ministry of Interior for permission.

Martin's brother Aleksandar Neshkoski stated that the police officers brought in as witnesses provided inconsistent/illogical statements, and the judge interrupted and ended the testimonies of all who wanted to provide more details, without asking further questions. Aleksandar expressed disappointment with the investigation and the trial. As an example of involvement of the highest state organs, he noted the fact that Martin had his ID in his pocket, but the Ministry of the Interior hid his identity for two days after the murder. The victim's brother said that the family dis not think Spasov's sentence was satisfactory and announced seeking responsibility of all the accomplices - if necessary, through the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

During the Q & A part, Aleksandar pointed out that he was receiving direct threats on a daily basis, but that he was not scared and would continue to seek justice.

Zharko Trajanoski, Mirjana Najchevska and Aleksandar Neshkoski at the public debate in the GEM Club in Skopje, Jan 19, 2012. Photo: Vancho Dzambaski, CC BY-NC-SA.

This post is part of our special coverage Macedonia Protests 2011.

Macedonia: Hoax About Facebook and Google SOPA Blackout

Filip Stojanovski — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:17:48 +0000

Macedonian blogs and independent sites IT.com.mk, Fail.mk, and Radio MOF [all mk] attempt to debunk the misinformation copy-pasted by a number of local commercial media (employing professional journalists) that Facebook, Google, Yahoo and other sites will join SOPA blackout, probably based on incompetent translation of a CBS article stating the opposite. The hoax caused mild panic and a huge number of link shares among Macedonian Facebook users.

Macedonia: Crowdmapping Projects Overview

Filip Stojanovski — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:14:10 +0000

Boris Ristovski provided an overview of crowdmapping projects in Macedonia [mk] and asked [mk] local netizens to respond to his online survey [mk], part of his master's thesis research.

Global Voices Most Read Posts in 2011

Solana Larsen — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 23:46:50 +0000

This post is part of our special coverage Global Voices in 2011.

Our top 20 list of most read posts on Global Voices for 2011 includes four from Japan, three from Egypt, and two from the Philippines. But only one story is about a giant crocodile!

It's been an incredible year for the reach and recognition of citizen media around the world, and that means Global Voices is no longer as lonely a media voice when it comes to reporting tweets and blog posts. Still, where mainstream media interest wanes, we're the ones who strive to continue documenting what local bloggers everywhere need the world to know.

Self Defence Forces arrive at the scene of the tsunami in Japan. Image by cosmobot, copyright Demotix (13/03/11).

Some of our proudest moments of 2011 will never be reflected on a top 20 list like the one below. This year we exceeded 500 active volunteer authors and translators of countless languages and countries, and we've published more than 2,600 long posts and 6,300 short ones in English alone.

Inevitably, many of the stories that don't get as wide a readership as they deserve are from countries that tend to be overlooked in international media. Unique coverage from across Africa, the Caucasus, Macedonia, the Russian language Internet, Latin America and indigenous rights are among some of the highlights. See the 2011 regional reviews by our editors and authors for a glance of what you may have missed.

Our Middle East and North Africa team deserves special mention this year. Throughout protests, blackouts, threats, they have managed to pull though and keep writing. The bloody images still proliferate, but our authors seek out constructive voices and angles for dialogue. So often, they've shared local humor and context that is difficult to appreciate from abroad without a guide.

Perhaps for the first time ever, China doesn't figure on our top 20 list of the year. These are particularly chilling times to blog about controversial subjects - something Global Voices authors in many other countries unfortunately also experience. This makes the stories that do come from anywhere free speech is frowned on even more precious.

Most read posts on Global Voices in 2011

Our most visited special coverage pages were:

In 2011 the world has learned more about the transformative power of online citizen media. We believe the best way to support these emerging voices on a global scale is to listen. Thanks for reading Global Voices! And please consider supporting our work with a donation.

This post is part of our special coverage Global Voices in 2011.

Macedonia: Nokaut Concert in Blogosphere

Filip Stojanovski — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 23:11:03 +0000

Vasil Buraliev blogged [mk] about the much-praised concert of the Macedonian rock band Nokaut (Knockout), sharing the good impression of the media reviews about the band (linked to through the post), but also adding candid details about some of their guests on stage.

Macedonia: Pioneering Battery Disposal Initiative

Filip Stojanovski — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 23:30:13 +0000

Greener, a Macedonian NGO, blogged [mk] about their pilot-project Go Clean [FB page, mk], which aims to grow into a national campaign for proper disposal of used batteries and accumulators.

Macedonia: Twitter Hashtag for Prime Minister - #Ж

Filip Stojanovski — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:49:59 +0000

The Macedonian Twitter community is using the hashtag #Ж (uppercase of the Cyrillic letter romanized as Zh or Ž) as the shortcut symbol referring to the Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski.

The influential Twitter user Necovski explained [mk] how this came about on his blog Aerodromski son (Aerodrom Dream). It all started with the opening of the PM's official Twitter profile. A news item [mk] about it in the Nova Makedonija daily contained an error, stating that the account would be Жгруевскиникола (Zhgruevskinikola), “which stuck as a plank in the eye” of the Twitterers (idiom based on a Bible verse from Matthew 7:3):

It is common knowledge among Twitter users, but we will explain that here too, that the nickname cannot be in Cyrillic - it must be in Latin and the character @ goes in front of it. Now anyone who has written at least two documents in their lives knows that experienced users use Macedonian, or English or American or whatever [Multilanguage Support], while only the beginners use obsolete customized fonts. Apparently the reporter, or the Journalist, wrote the article with combination of old fonts. The technical person in the newsroom used [some automatic tool to convert the whole text into appropriate Cyrillic version, which also converted the parts which should have remained in Latin] resulting in Жгруевскиникола, causing an uproar. The daily subsequently corrected the article's online version into the appropriate @GruevskiNikola, which counts as yet another victory of the critical eye of the Twitter community.

The Twitterers, as usual, adopted the hashtag #Ж as a trophy of this victory. (You create a hashtag by putting the prefix # to a certain word, making it easier to discuss and search about that topic within Twitter.) Therefore, almost all tweets related to the work of the Government or personally about some statement by the PM fall under the #Ж hashtag…

For instance, VidanaDesign and Stariot used the hashtag to discuss [mk] the scandal when a photoreporter of the Fokus daily revealed that the Members of Parliament from the ruling party received handwritten notes by the PM with instructions on what to ask him during an official Q&A session on the Cabinet's accountability (pictured note to Ilija Dimovski, MP).

A screenshot of a part of a conversation on whether a typo from PM's note will join the "hashtag alphabet"

The content of the PM's official Twitter profile mostly consists of announcements in Macedonian, written in third person (e.g., “Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski will make a speech at the meeting organized by Konrad Adenauer Foundation,” and first-person posts in English automatically generated through his Facebook profile (”I posted 13 photos on Facebook in the album…”). The obvious lack of personal touch and lack of care for the format of the medium, as the tweets are just truncated article titles, has not contributed to the regard for this profile. In addition, “the PM” - or, to be more precise, the persons administering his profile - have never used “his” hashtag.

Examples of two basic kinds of tweets by the Macedonian PM.

Vlatko Vasilj, who has 1,086 followers, as opposed to the PM's 733, wrote [mk]:

This Twitter thing will make sense as long as I have more followers than #Zh!! :)

Another invocation of the hashtag involved the recent action of using plastic bottles to make a Christmas tree. ArsovaM commented [mk]:

If our fir tree gets good ratings, #Zh could say the project was part of the [Skopje 2014 plan]

Necovski wrote an explanatory post [mk] quoted above in response to numerous inquires by novice or uninformed social media users about the meaning of #Ж, which also encroached on Facebook thanks to apps that automatically post tweets as statuses. He illustrated it with a collage by Sead93 and Banekoma [mk], featuring a parody of the famous quote of President Ivanov, who - when asked by journalists to define what he means by saying he advocates “reasonable compromise” in the name dispute with Greece - furiously retorted [mk] with the haphazard tautology: “Reasonable compromise is a reasonable compromise! I cannot explain that to you now!”

"What is #Zh? - #Zh is #Zh!"
Collage about Prime Minister's hashtag, featuring President Ivanov.

Macedonia: Health System Software Vendor Lock-in

Filip Stojanovski — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:22:55 +0000

Novica Nakov warned [mk] that the state discriminates against users of operating systems like GNU/Linux or Mac OS X, purporting vendor lock-in by forcing medical doctors to use the latest version of Windows as the only platform for the obligatory e-health card software [mk] by the Fund for Health Insurance of Macedonia.