VIEWS: KATERINA BOGOEVA

Introduction and Recognition

On this elections the non-governmental organizations try, through their projects and campaigns, to direct the public’s attention to a part of the offered electoral programs, in order to decrease the risk of future recognition in vain, to raise the meaning of the word citizen on a higher level, on a level of individual identity, not only a voting number The parliamentary elections in the country are in progress and each step in the streets means facing the ideas and promises of the ones who entered the race for a better future. Do you recognize yourself at least in a part of their presented programs?
Do you manage to see that someone else thinks nearly the same or identically for certain segments of life or you are only in a phase of getting familiar with some new segments of our reality? Do you listen to your intuitive voice, which has so far guided you through many roads and now asks you to respect it? The answers to many of the asked questions come later, but, unfortunately, the so far experience for most of the citizens shows that a part of them cannot recognize at all some of the politicians after they gain the power and they have been asking themselves for years what has happened with the promises, with the people who at the pre-electoral campaigns talked with such trust, whether their memory is so weak? “We might have made a mistake of recognition“, some would say, same as when on the streets you see a man who reminds you a lot of someone dear to you and you hurry up to get to him, but when you see his face close up, you realize that it was just fruit of your great desire.

On this elections the non-governmental organizations try, through their projects and campaigns, to direct the public’s attention to a part of the offered electoral programs, in order to decrease the risk of future recognition in vain, to raise the meaning of the word citizen on a higher level, on a level of individual identity, not only a voting number. It is a struggle for better getting familiar with our reality, which, seen with the eyes of our citizens, has different perspectives. Better getting to know with what we have been offered, and related to the gender policy, environmental protection policy, also to the political and economic perspectives, but in a more different way than the one usually practiced by the political parties. During the electoral race, the NGO representatives, as well as “the ordinary citizens”, circulate with their ideas, offering them to the public through their info-center, located in the cult cafe Medium, opposite the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia. In my opinion it is another acquaintance with the citizens from my town, man and women, who are sitting at home listening to the speeches of the future parliamentarians, go to the mass meetings, watch the videos and a part of the electoral marketing, and on the other hand they are sitting in Medium drinking coffee and loudly speaking about their vision of their own country. The electoral race is an opportunity for mutual introducing one to another, parties among themselves, their voters, but also the NGOs’ attitude, their characteristics, their literature, the way of presenting the attitudes. And vice versa.

What brings happiness in the pleasant ambient of the non-governmental info-center is the feeling of confidence in expressing the attitudes which the NGOs are ready to defend, versus distrust that a lot of people have and who think that “the non-typical participation in the electoral process” is naive, maybe because of the bar’s green hedge which does not look like the ones put by the parties when they present their programs. The walls consist of various materials, but the thinnest are the ones made of people in which the citizens often recognize themselves after the elections, when a lot of people come to greet them, thinking that they will see once presented idea in them, but unfortunately, they will come across a completely new face expression.

And green is a very beautiful color, it especially comes to the fore when it separates you from the concrete and asphalt’s greyness.