Just before today's matches the sound of a gong announced that an e-mail had arrived. It was one of the shortest three I have ever received and despite it is private I found it unusual enough for an opening to a more general-interest story. My friend Maja Petrusevska, Desk editor of the BBC World, Macedonian Service, asked me "Will you come to look after my husband?".
Looking after her husband, my friend George Zafirovski, is obviously a pun, a joke. The guy is a grown-up very alert and most independent person. Even if he needed to be looked after, such a task would be a complicated because the guy is workaholic. Movable type. He leaves his Croydon home early and works long hours over computers near Mayfair, in the heart of London. After five he relaxes with a pint in the company of his buddies, goes to a gym, plays guitar or has "things to do". George is not submissive to home discipline and I hate waiting on people for who I have spent half a day cooking balkan intricate dishes like "pindzur", "tarator" or "turlija". He will be like a stray dog when Maja and their two daughters leave for Skopje in a fortnight or so. She will cover the general elections in Macedonia (july 5th) while their two girls will enjoy their summer holidays being spoiled by their grandparents.
So, this is it: The BBC, the EU, the NATO, the OSCE, every Tom and Harry versus the General Elections in Macedonia, the Latest EU Candidate-country.
A week ago Maja (here in front of the Pier at Scheveningen), a hell of an ambitious journalist, showed off (see top) with the BBC brand new page dedicated to the elections in the poor Balkan country. She knows my affiliation with Deutsche Welle World Macedonian Program and obviously wanted to score a point. Though broadcasting much more content towards Macedonia, Deutsche Welle does not have a special "Elections 2006" page. Knowing the people who produce the Macedonian programs in both Bonn and London, I think that DW-World explored many aspects of a very delicate line of thought before deciding not to run a special "Macedonia - Elections 2006" page on its web--site. The electorate out there appears fed up with the media. Every single "quack" is quoted with allegedly relevant statements while the political parties wrestle with topics mainly irrelevant for the future of the land. In his weekly column Prof. Ph-d Ljubomir Frckovski writes that the campaign is crap, that it feels like floating in a sewage full of feces (which he calls "sh**") and will result with a 'cabbage-government". One may refer to such a powerful body as "Brassica Oleracea Capitata" Group.
But then, something much more serious (or indicative) is also evident this time. Only the doormen of the foreign embassies in Skopje did not begin warning the President, the Government, the Parliament, the State Election Commission and the general public that "this time" the voting must be clean. Every other Tom and Harry on a stop-over in Skopje, without a blink of the eye, opens with idiotical outings about elections and democracy.
The USA went into traumatic recount, Supreme court vote, and all sorts of allegations to confirm a president-almost-elect and short six years latter an absolutely arrogant woman misplaced in Skopje as an envoy does not miss a day without passing unwarranted advice about the importance of fair-and-square elections. The other day Italy went into recount. Elections were annulled in Indochina. Rita Verdonk screamed fraud ahead of inter-party elections for a simple "lijsttrekker" in Holland.
Why would two million people want yet another website page about these elections, a page produced by 3-4 journalists 2000 miles away? How can they be "the first to know" anything relevant about the elections? If you want to find out the kind of stinkingly patronizing attitude of those people - you may well read the junk by Gabriel Partos the BBC South-East Europe analyst.
In any case, if you read Macedonian, the BBC Election 2006 is the place you might find selected topics related to this event. The election campaign ends up on the 3d of July, voting takes place on the 5th. And how do they say: "Let the best ones win"!
George and I, whenever not in a pub with his friends, will discuss the lay-out of my new guide-book (on Greece) and eventually prepare a web-site about The Netherlands unless we d not begin experimenting with a podcast about the future of our civilization.

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