New York Times, Economist, Neue Zuricher Zeitung - колку шамари, заушки, чврги и слично може да истрпи оваа дебелокожеста власт од светот пред да сфати дека Скопје 2014 е промашување?„Овие знаменитости не се споменици од минатите векови, туку дел од „Скопје 2014“, четири години стар проект, кој опфаќа огромни бронзени статуи, нови владини згради и музеи, фонтани и светла во боја,“ пишува на почетокот на написот долгодошната дописничка на Фајненшл Тајмс (ФТ) од Атина, Керин Хоуп.
Во написот се цитира и Андреј Жерновски, кој најави дека ќе повика меѓународен ревизор за да се испита финансиската страна на проектот, истакнувајќи го следново:
- Откривме дека голема скулптура може да се купи за околу 65.000 евра, но, сепак, оние на Даме Груев и Гоце Делчев кај мостот чинат речиси 10 пати повеќе!
July 23, 2013 4:41 pm
Celebration of Skopje’s heritage proves costly and divisive
By Kerin Hope in Skopje
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| New statuary in central Skopje |
A shaggy-haired Alexander the Great on horseback raises his sword high above Skopje’s main square. Two 19th-century revolutionaries pose beside an Ottoman-era stone bridge. A row of neo-baroque buildings in glittering marble lines the opposite bank of the fast-flowing Vardar river.
But these landmarks are not the monuments of past centuries but part of “Skopje 2014”, a four-year old project encompassing huge bronze statues, new government offices and museums, fountains and coloured lights.
They have transformed the Macedonian capital’s drab centre into a tourist attraction by highlighting the country’s rich but little-known heritage, according to Nikola Gruevski, the prime minister.
“We are a very young country, only 23 years old, and when we became independent from Yugoslavia we were a nation with its own history but no monuments or statues,” Mr Gruevski, whose idea it was, told the Financial Times. “Now we have between 30 and 40 of them – including a triumphal arch built to mark our first 20 years of independence – and more will be built.
Critics of Skopje 2014, however, say it is too expensive, has turned the city centre into something resembling Disneyland, and has an unwelcome ideological hue.
“It’s kitschy and I think it creates an impression of who we are and where we belong that doesn’t help relations with our neighbours,” says Branko Geroski, a political commentator.
The transformation of Skopje is meant, in part, to promote a Macedonian identity stretching back to the ancient Greek and medieval Bulgarian empires that once held sway in the southern Balkans.
But with the ebb and flow of invaders and armies, some of the Macedonian “heroes” are also claimed by other countries. The erection of the statue of Alexander and another of Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria, for example, have irritated governments in Sofia and Athens.
The Greeks are particularly tetchy. Athens has vetoed Macedonia’s membership of Nato and the start of EU accession talks since 2008, claiming its northern neighbour’s name reflects a veiled threat to its own region of Macedonia and must be changed. Two decades of intermittent talks on the name issue mediated by a UN special envoy have failed to produce a compromise.
For many Macedonians the project has become a focus of discontent with Mr Gruevski’s government. Voters in Skopje’s Centar district, covering more than 100,000 residents of the city centre, backed an opposition candidate at municipal elections in March for the first time in a decade.
Andrej Zernovski, the new Centar mayor, wants to halt the project, pull down the triumphal arch and remove most of the statues, which he says should be redistributed among the country’s rundown smaller cities.
“The government’s biggest mistake was to go ahead without consulting the citizens who, after all, are paying for the project,” said Mr Zernovski, a lawmaker from the small Liberal Democratic party. “Voters decided it was too expensive and they were right . . . We face big cost overruns that we can’t afford and we have no idea where the money went.”
The budget for Skopje 2014, set at €80m when the project was launched four years ago, had risen to €207m, Mr Gruevski admitted.
Mr Zernоvski said he planned to call in an international auditor to examine the project after discovering the government paid high prices for many of the largest statues. “We found out you can buy a good-sized statue for around €65,000, yet those of Dame Gruev and Goce Delchev [the two revolutionaries] by the bridge cost nearly 10 times that amount,” he said.
Dame Gruev, a Macedonian-born schoolteacher, plotted against the Ottoman rulers of the south Balkans from his base in northern Greece. He worked with Goce Delchev, a Bulgarian expelled from a military academy for political activity, on setting up a revolutionary movement for an independent Macedonia. They were killed in separate skirmishes with Ottoman troops, Gruev in 1906, Delchev in 1903.
Rising spending on Skopje 2014 attracted the attention of the rating agency Standard & Poor’s, which downgraded Macedonia by one notch to BBminus in May, citing among other problems “recent increases in public capital expenditure on non-productive assets”.
Yet Mr Gruevski defended the project on economic grounds, saying the new administrative buildings had enabled the government to make savings on rent, while keeping local construction companies afloat and providing employment for about 10,000 people in a country with a 30 per cent jobless rate.
It had also contributed to a 10-15 per cent annual rise in tourism to Skopje, he said.
Vladislav Benark and his wife Jana, visitors from the Czech Republic, said they were surprised and impressed by the array of statues in the square. “I think it’s a big impression for tourists because we came around the corner and – wow – these are very nice statues,” said Mrs Benark.
Additional reporting by Kester Eddy
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