Dear fellow citizens,
I congratulate you on October 23, the Day of the Macedonian Revolutionary Struggle, when we proudly recall the grandiose historical role of the Macedonian revolutionary organization, on whose spirit and work the Macedonian statehood rests.
I have reminded you many times that life in freedom, peace and democracy in our own national state is not given to us, but is won and chosen by our ancestors, the Macedonian revolutionaries. It is no coincidence that the Republic, in Article 36 of the Constitution, guarantees special rights to those who fought for the identity of the Macedonian people and its statehood in the national liberation wars for Macedonia.
Therefore, today’s great holiday is an opportunity to remember the heroes who gave their lives for a free, independent, but also for a social, solidary and democratic Macedonian state. Their ideals were the core of the most advanced ideas of the late 19th century, from them spring and are based the European values, embedded in the constitutive documents of the EU, to which I constantly call.
The celebration of October 23, the Day of the Macedonian Revolutionary Struggle, is a reminder of our obligation to cherish and continue the sacred revolutionary work through the care and protection of the eternal humane principles.
To them, but also to our successors, we have an obligation honestly, responsibly and dedicatedly, to continue their revolutionary path, not with weapons, but with a revolutionary mind, revolutionary knowledge and with revolutionary reforms.
We have no other homeland, except theirs, that of the Macedonian revolutionaries. We are obliged to preserve it and politically embed it where it has always belonged geographically, historically and culturally – in Europe.
Let us continue to love it, develop it and protect it, but also to respect and cherish the foundations on which it was built – law, justice, ethics, solidarity and equality.
Congratulations on this holiday!
