The whole region cries out for a moral reorientation of politics that will allow a new generation of leaders to emerge.
For long-term and seasoned political observers with a genuine interest in Macedonia — and the whole of Balkans, for that matter — the recent bloody events in Kumanovo have little to do with that town or its residents. This unnecessary tragedy, which left people dead, destroyed lives and has unsettled the region, is merely a consequence of what happens when a country mistakes itself to be a democracy when in fact a class of politicians preside over what should be properly called a thugocracy.
The reaction to these events by stewards of the regional peace, namely the EU, and the US, indicates a strategic avoidance on their part, or a misunderstanding of a larger crisis.
They prefer to localize incidents, shrink them artificially and suppress them. They throw in jail some deluded psychopaths with guns, prosecute some unlucky and faceless bureaucrat, write a ten-point security reform plan, travel to Brussels or Washington for some think-tank talk and stale coffee, and the dark clouds over the Balkans shall drift away once more.
What the international community seems to ignore, not only about Macedonia but about the Balkans as a whole, is that the region is not a marketplace of ideas and competing philosophical visions of how to govern society. It is a turf for political thugs who use a broken ethnic landscape to perpetuate and sustain their own little fiefdoms.
For a country to bear a respectable resemblance to a modern democracy that respects its citizens, human rights, and freedom of expression, divisions about ethnicity and history need to be laid to rest as much as possible.
This is not to ignore the ethnic differences and forget the injustices of the past; it is to deny political thugs the fodder they need to feed on and cause mayhem, as they try to hold on to their corrupt power.
By and large, the current generation of politicians governing the Balkans grew up in, and were indoctrinated in, the toxic political environment of the 1990s. A class of political charlatans, they have a scornful attitude towards the people they claim to serve. This is a generation who never had the time, the will, or the proper context to learn the contours of a working democracy where, beyond the political horse-trading and backstabbing, there is a creed of public service that politicians in the Balkans never understood.
The entire attempt to try to put into place a system of democratic governance, whether in Macedonia, Kosovo or in Bosnia in recent years, seems a charade, an incompetent parody, that collapses into itself as soon as it appears to stand on firm ground.
There is a grave misunderstanding across the Balkans about what constitutes a proper democracy, whereby things like elections meet the demands of a democratic society.
But elections by themselves do not make democracies. A proper democratic system is built on a set of fundamental principles, such as freedom of expression, fundamental human rights, a fair justice system, and, above all, a social contract between public servants and the citizenry.
The international community may have spent billions of dollars patching up the Balkans over the last 15 years, but it has failed to cultivate these fundamental principles and establish sustainable systems in which a proper democratic society can emerge.
Large swaths of government have fallen hostage to sophisticated nepotistic networks, allowing corruption to seep in and erode public trust in governments before the region even got a chance to emerge from the ruins of history.
Seen from this perspective, those who care about the region may well feel gloomy and dejected. There are few things more depressing for an up-and-coming region than succumbing to the rule of little despots who cause societies to hemorrhage their young people and waste their potential.
But, a sober understanding of these destructive undercurrents should serve as a social and moral platform upon which a new generation of leaders should emerge.
These new leaders should not only be festooned with proper business and educational credentials. They should cultivate a fundamentally revamped understanding of what constitutes public service. Politics in the Balkans does not need merely governance reform — it needs an ethical restructuring at the core, a moral reorientation whereby politicians serve with a civic duty in mind, attempting to build a decent place for all people to live in and raise their children.
That time has come not only for citizens of Macedonia, but for people across the Balkans to rise up and say no to the thugs building their little thugocracies throughout the region. No to cultivating nepotistic and corrupt public service and no to curtailing personal liberties and freedom of expression and discriminating on the bases of gender, ethnic background, faith, or political creed.
These are fundamental rights and values that make up a democracy, without which any progress, economic or otherwise, is hopeless in the long run. The region has seen too much strife and bloodshed to allow the rise of another class of myopic politicians who abuse the past, keep wounds fresh and rob people of the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of freedom.