Respected citizens,
On 8 September 1991, legally and legitimately, based on the inalienable and unchallengeable right to self-determination of every nation, 75.74% of the electorate voted in the referendum for independent and sovereign Macedonia, and 72.16% of those registered voted in favor!
Thus, we, the Macedonian citizens, crowned the centuries-old struggle of the Ilinden fighters and the partisans with a unitary, independent and sovereign state!
Today, 34 years later, in a world based on force, not law, we are still fighting for a sovereign, equal, modern, standard, European, legal state, a member of the European Union.
Over the past three decades, we have faced numerous internal divisions and crises, external pressures and challenges, concessions and compromises inconsistent with the 1991 referendum decision, and even international and national law.
Politics, unfortunately, teaches us that injustices are not removed with a stroke of the pen, but with a painstaking domestic and international struggle, with legal arguments and careful political activities, with the painstaking building of friendly alliances, not with reckless and hasty acts, with internal unity, not with divisions, with self-respect, but also with mutual respect.
The path to law and justice leads through a Europeanized state, founded on the Copenhagen criteria, through democratic government, limited by a system of efficient checks and balances, through a competitive and prosperous economy, through a participatory political culture, through a strong civil society and free media.
Young people are not held back and stimulated by partisanship and politicization, but by education and science that stimulate, respect and reward knowledge, labor and merit.
If our homeland is European, I am sure that our children and grandchildren will want to work, create and raise families here, in their home, or to constantly cooperate with the homeland, if they are abroad, temporarily or permanently. Only in a European setting is a European future created!
In the end, I have not given up and I will never give up on Macedonian national interests. We must continue to reaffirm them and fight for them at home and abroad, in European and international institutions, in a legal and political, democratic way, remembering and referring to national and international law, on September 8.
Congratulations on September 8 – Independence Day!
