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Elections are on their way!
When there is such an announcement, the citizen united, or joined in a standard, apolitical NGO activity would ask himself: What do We have to do with It, It is parties and politicians’ job and we should mind our own business!?
It is like that, but it also is not like that. Therefore here is one of the warnings that is very important and if we were sober, it would save us from many difficulties both in the pre-elections period and on the election day itself, and mostly after the elections, that is constitution of new (future) power.
At the beginning of the ‘90s in Macedonia, apart from the new political parties, organizations occurred that did not have any political ambitions, on the contrary, they constituted the core of what is today called NGO world and as a figure implies over six thousand organizations. It was a world towards which politics did not have any built attitude/relation and for many years (until several years ago) it was considered to be a right/left instrument on their (political) way in building the new social organism, democratic, as party-political activists understood democracy (in a reduced way).
For a decade and more the NGO world had a fate to live in a light of accuses that it is “someone’s” and that it was about an aggressive structure of citizens that did not have any political legitimacy (“You have not been on elections!”) and wanted to poach on state affairs! Then a “warming” followed, because part of the politics (especially in the local self-government) definitely realized that the NGO world is however “socially useful” on one hand, and extremely good admission at donors on the other hand. It is the bright side of the story. The other part says that political parties’ headquarters have organized themselves for breakout and building positions in the NGO world and on several occasions, and nowadays, too, they have been successful! The intention is certainly manipulative and in that sense, here is the point: the NGO world has to be really careful in the relations with politics (in the pre-elections period, elections themselves, after the elections) because there will be, if there are not at the moment, attempts to be involved in various manipulations that will not discredit only the NGO-engagement of that organization, or an individual, but all other NGOs, thus making it easy for the spread and well-bribed NGO anti front. It certainly does not mean that the NGO sector relieves them of responsibility. They will have to be active in helping further cultivation of democratic space as well as building dams against anyone that would use the pre-election period for manipulations, violence and other forms of discrediting the Macedonian model of democracy/state. We are in a period where the NGO world will have to be in permanent duty in order to help ourselves, because in the past it was proven that those who wave party (political) flags in the pre-election period and the elections themselves take care of the future and the reputation of this country the least. They have so far had difficulties in understanding what exactly democracy is and in that sense we must not let them understand us, not to lie the citizens and themselves.
Therefore the task is the following: to open wide our eyes, to warn all the friends from our NGO world not to be lied by their minds and to send a message to politics saying that it is under a strong surveillance.
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