VIEWS

Who has answered the EU questionnaire on behalf of the civil society sector?

These days the main preoccupation of the citizens of Macedonia is whether we will receive an invitation to join the European Union or it will be postponed for some better times, as it obviously happened to the invitation for NATO membership. In spite of the fact that some justify the delay of the invitation for NATO membership with the fact that the reason can be non-readiness of the other “package-countries”, that is Croatia and Albania, still, those messages that were sent to Macedonia imply our non-preparedness and among the other things, the low level of democracy development in Macedonia. Do we need to search the reason for this in the low mentality of the great number of citizens about understanding democracy? The condition of the civil society sector, that is, how developed it is in Macedonia, how it influences overall conditions, is it under politics’ influence and if it is in function of democracy development at all, have certainly been some of the key questions in the EU questionnaire. The question is: who has answered all these and some similar questions? If the answers were given by the Government commission, the validity of the answers would be doubtful, because during the whole period of time, no civil society sector body (of the bigger civil society organizations) has ever had a meeting to inform the Government about the conditions in the sector. Practicing democracy in Macedonia has started since its independence, that is the occurrence of the first pluralism, so we often ask ourselves why, even after 15 years of the country’s independence, is democracy in Macedonia developed to such degree? Who has contributed more in such development (smaller or bigger): political parties or different organizations of the civil society sector? The role of the civil society sector started developing in the mid 90’s of the last century, although its occurrence on the scene of the Macedonian public started in 1991. Ruling establishment and citizens’ distrust towards this kind of civic non-governmental organizing is still present nowadays, although there has been a more positive trend for the last 4 to 5 years. Unfortunately, citizens are more tied to political parties and have more trust in them than in civil society non-governmental organizations. It will not be wrong if we claim that over 30% of the total voting electorate in Macedonia acts politically fanatically. It means that in Macedonia political parties still have the main role in development of democracy, which implies, like people, like government, like government, like democracy. Today there are 5-10 thousand civil society organizations in Macedonia but only few of them take actions they were established for. Does Macedonia need so many organizations? The answer is certainly negative. And many of them that carry out some activities cannot praise with some achieved results. Those who have left some results in the society with their activities can be counted on the fingers of one hand, that is, a bigger group of citizens are familiar with them and fortunately they are well-known not only in the region, but wider. However, the influence of these more active organizations on social trends in Macedonia is minimal, if compared with the political parties’ influence. The answer to such condition lies above all in the badly organized civil society sector, since many of the more active civil society organizations are colored both nationally and with parties, so they can indirectly support certain political option or interests of one nation, which is in favor of political parties. Mass media also make small space for the civil society sector, so we cannot expect any improvements in near future. If nothing changes, we remain at the mercy (cruelty) of the political parties to improve our democracy and if they do not change, then Euro-Atlantic integrations will still be farther. (the author of the text is honored president of the humanitarian organization El Hilal)