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The dog’s life is not so bad after all!

These days in one of the daily newspapers I read an interesting heading: “Macedonian animals will live according to European standards”. In the proposal law for animal welfare, which is what this text addresses, one can only come across beautiful things. The animals’ habitat should be protected from noise, vibration, air pollution and it should be a place where hygiene could be easily maintained. Animals should not be unjustly exposed to pain, suffering, physical injury or fear. If some foreigner reads the text (if you are from here, you must have some previous knowledge), he/she may think that this is a country where all problems have been solved. Since there is a law that addresses the animals’ welfare, one should have no worries when it comes to the people.

Well, the reality is quite different. Besides the everyday facing with the “injustice”, the Polio Plus press conference confirmed to me what I had already known. You probably know it, too. The story of discriminating the people with disabilities is nothing new. I will state one of the many examples: in order to perform a managerial function, the person with disabilities should get a positive opinion/mark from a commission. At least, that is what the Measures for improving the employment and working conditions of a person with disabilities say. Note this:  measures for improving. And do the members of parliament, the presidents and the prime ministers need to get any opinion of?

And then, why don’t we finally end the old stories? I believe we should do that before we open the new ones (as the abovementioned one). I understand what our civic activism is like, but in the Polio Plus story that was not the problem. They managed to mobilize 18,968 citizens who signed for the new Law for protecting the rights and the dignity of the people with disabilities. What for? The first successful civic initiative got stuck in the bureaucratic procedures. What about the above-mentioned one? Well, it found place in the Parliament agenda.

No brighter is the story of the women-victims of family violence. Those who consider themselves braver, those who had decided to speak about their problem and ask for help, those who managed to find a shelter – well they can no longer receive social help. That is what the state says. Two good things do not come together – either you get one or the other. What good things they are!

Considering all the paradoxes of our society, it should not come as a surprise that first, we protect the animals, and then the people, maybe. The dog’s life is not what it used to be, now one only wishes to have it.

 

Gonce Jakovleska