Shamed Macedonian Government Caves in to Student Demands
The Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Macedonia announced a 1,050,000 euro (1.46 million US dollar) tender for renovation of the now infamous Goce Delchev student dormitory in Skopje on April 30, 2014, as reported [mk] by Faktor.
Apparently, this decision is a direct consequence of the digital activism initiative Operation Student Dorm, which gave visibility to the horrific living conditions provided in the university dormitory in question and managed to reverse the trend of years of promises [mk] that went unfulfilled by the government into concrete action.
Damage control: Facebook ad
with Macedonian Prime Minister's picture titled “The Students are Right”. It claims that “the Goce Delchev student dorm will be completely reconstructed.”
After the initial reaction of intimidation and censorship by authorities, the ruling political party apparently evaluated the risk of alienating the 1200 students living in the dorm (and their families) on the eve of the upcoming elections. As part of an apparent damage control campaign, they promised that the dorm will be reconstructed, and publicized that promise through government-friendly media, along with paid Facebook ads leading to an interview with the incumbent Prime Minister titled “The Students are Right.”
Some social media users noticed that the words used by Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski in this interview eerily resembled a famous quote by Yugoslavian socialist leader Josip Broz Tito, after a brutal intervention of the so-called “people's police” failed to quash major student protests in Belgrade, which were part of the 1968 world movement for democracy. The sentence [sr], “Comrade Tito said that the students are right”, was a popular catchphrase throughout the former Yugoslavian states, and was immortalized in a famous scene [sr] of the regional cult classic 1986 film The Elusive Summer of '68. In the film, after ‘the troubles’ of the 1968 protests are depicted, the father of the family removes the television set to prevent the children from talking about things the regime might find seditious. After Tito's announcement, he proudly takes the television set out from the cellar and allows his children to use it again.
Another current government action bears evidence to the growing importance of students as a voting bloc. Just before the last round of the 2014 presidential elections on Friday April 25, the Macedonian government transferred funds for students’ overdue scholarships. The monthly instalments for students who begin the school year in October usually start several months later, with pauses, most often dragging the payments out until the following autumn. This time around, students received seven months worth of late scholarships in one bulk payment, even though the government previously announced that payments would start in May, after the elections. The monthly stipends amount to between 50 to 65 euro.
There has been no announcement about the reconstruction of other student dormitories in Skopje or elsewhere, many of which house a smaller number of students. One such example is the ‘Medicinar’ dorm for medical students, which is set within the complex of the Skopje Clinical Center. The following photos were taken by the author on April 9, 2014 [all published here under CC-BY license].
20 comments
FAKE NEWS by a SOROS paid “journalist”
Give me a break….
Fuoff http://english.republika.mk/?p=122297
Here is what one of the key national heroes of SKOPJE, Goce Delchev had to say about the Skopjians who pretend to be Macedonians.
Goce Delchev was a key leader in the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), a paramilitary organization active in the Ottoman territories, in Europe at the end of the 19th, and the beginning of the 20th century.
The below is a letter from Goce Delchev to Nikola Maleshevski in which he refers to himself as a Bulgarian.
“I have received all letters which were sent by or through you. May the dissents and cleavages not frighten you. It is really a pity, but what can we possibly do when WE OURSELVES ARE BULGARIANS and all suffer from the same disease! If this disease had not existed in our forefathers who passed it on to us, we wouldnt have fallen under the ugly sceptre of the Turkish sultans.”
Meanwhile, the elevators in one of the buildings of the student dorm don`t work for 2 weeks. The building has 14 floors.
http://www.radiomof.mk/liftovite-vo-studentskiot-gotse-delchev-povtorno-ne-rabotat/
Hey, Makedonier1991, is this news also faked by Soros journalists? Did they break the elevator?
Shame.
The author of this article is paid by the Soros group that are supporting the
Sociodemocrats of Macedonia who also refuse to take their place in the parliament because they were destroyed by the VMRO-DPMNE on April 27th,2014 in the free and democratic polling stations.Ivanov received 530,000 votes,and more than 200,000 votes for their candidate who in 2004 he allowed the polling boxes to be stuffed with fictitious votes for Crvenkovski.
The leader of the SDSM has been pardoned by his former boss for the robbery of 8 million euros from Global,and the vice-leader Sekerinska continues to launder money through her husbands position in the company he works.
Filip Stojanovski is a supporter of these so-called leaders of the former communist party.He has never written anything positive for his own country because Crvenkovski Zaev,Sekerinska and Pendarovski are working for a foreign government,and Stojanovski supporting them,and is paid by them.
One day,they will stand in front of the Macedonian justice,it will happen as it did happen to Philotas.
“We are Slavs. There’s no connection between us and Alexander the Great” — Kiro Gligorov, First elected President of FYROM.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o_gjBAhak18