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Trade Deficits and the Health of the Economy-17: Dialog with Nikola Gruevski, former Minister of Finance of Macedonia

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 4/3/2006

SV: There is no point in separating the issues of education and management. The students of today are the managers of tomorrow. This old generation of mostly corrupt political commissars masquerading as managers and robbing the assets of the firms they are entrusted with – is bound to pass. Biology will do it if political processes will not. But is Macedonia looking into a brighter future? I am afraid that not necessarily.

To start with, there is a dramatic brain drain. Those who can leave, physically or intellectually, is doing so or trying to do so. Young people see no hope, they are angry, they never want to look back, they feel betrayed, they talk about Macedonia in terms usually reserved to treacherous wives. Those who stay behind are either patriots or unlucky or stupid or as corrupt as the preceding generations were.

Higher education in Macedonia is a farce. University professors are largely divied to two groups: the inept and the corrupt. Bribery is rampant. Marks are bought. Sexual favours, money and plain old favouritism determine the academic achievements of many students. The curricula are passe, the libraries outdated, the labs antiquated, the teachers do not bother to read foreign literature, the textbooks are plainly plagiarized rehashed. Many of them do not even know foreign languages, never been abroad for an extended period of time. The result is a dangerous mismatch between what the country needs and what the universities churn out. Additionally, many of the diplomas are not worth the material they are made of. There is a crying and desperate need for qualified, trained, skilled and properly educated manpower.

Where will the management cadre come from? From the bloated academia which produces nothing but make believe degrees? From the old socialistic planned economy? From the government's bureaucrats?

This reminds me of one last issue that we neglected to tackle: the disaffection of the Macedonian diaspora with Macedonia. Israel was virtually built with Jewish money, talent and political influence abroad. There is a relatively thriving Macedonian diaspora in Australia, Canada, the USA. It would the first natural conduit for Macedonian exports. It would have been the first grounds for the recruitment of management, technological and financial talents. But it is not. This, to me, tells the whole story. If rich Macedonians do not trust Macedonia, do not support it, ignore it, debase it in public – why should the West behave differently? And why doesn't your country organize all these Macedonians into a powerful front wherever they are? The Czechs, the Slovaks, the Armenians, the Kurds, the Jews, the Arabs – every nation relies on it "delegates" in the outside world. Every nation, that is, except one. There wil be no prizes for guessing which.

NG: RM must find the way to hasten the spontaneous and very slow process of changing the economic structure, in order to realize bigger exports and debt reduction. Otherwise it will live doomed to disaster. Not to disaster, as one Macedonian theatre play says, because the disaster is a definite state, and even less to welfare, from which RM is still too far, but to a fall. Free fall. In the same holes. In the same way. Again and again. Persistently and stubbornly. Without deriving any lessons. This becomes comic. Even a bear in the circus can learn to ride a bicycle.