On Maknews, Coolski of this forum asked the following:
Vodenka replied:
what do you think a political party (representing ethnic Macedonians) in Greece should do to engage and entice the vote of ethnic Macedonians?
First of all Vinozito should stop talking about "minority". No Macedonian likes this term because it makes him feel that is something "strange" to the country. Do not forget that most of our people are bombarded with Greek propaganda and ignore basic democratic and human rights terminology.
Second thing that it should do is give more attention to what people is ready to accept and not all the "package" of "minority" rights that most of the people think it is too extreme. Do not forget that most of the Macedonians in Greece feel they belong to a different ethnic group but they do not accept to belong to the same nation of the Macedonians in Republic of Macedonia or the Macedonians in Pirin (due to historical ignorance and almost 100 years of isolation from the other Macedonians).
EU has lots of laws and directives for the "autochthonous" people which Macedonians should be informed of. I talked once to a lady ethnic Croatian and Austrian citizen: she told me that in her Croatian community in Austria they speak a dialect of the official Croatian language and this is the language they are teaching to their children. They even printed a vocabulary of their dialect.
All the propaganda of Vinozito is based on the idea that Macedonians are a minority of a "foreign" nation (something like the Albanians in Macedonia) but our people do not like this as they do not like to loose their local identity in favor of the identity of the Macedonians of the Republic of Macedonia.
We should stress on the similarities among all the Macedonian groups and work on that and not try to make "homogeneity" with one imposed official identity for all the Macedonians.
I personally think that if we had the human and community rights that you Macedonians in the Diaspora have, our people would be very happy! This does not include of course the obligatory teaching of the official language of the Republic of Macedonia, as Vinozito insists! It could include though some EU laws which allow to autochthonous populations (like the Macedonians in Greece) to get their language to be taught in the public schools were it is requested by the inhabitants.
A Macedonian Party or organization should be near the people to help them to keep and develop their local ethnic identity and by doing so, help the Greek people to come to know us and show that Greeks have nothing to fear from Macedonians or any other ethnic, linguistic, religious community that exist in Greece and are part of the Greek State and not something outside it.
What Vinozito is doing now is to attack all the Greek institutions and governments, always in a very belligerent way that makes more difficult for our people to be accepted by the majority of Greek society.
Second thing that it should do is give more attention to what people is ready to accept and not all the "package" of "minority" rights that most of the people think it is too extreme. Do not forget that most of the Macedonians in Greece feel they belong to a different ethnic group but they do not accept to belong to the same nation of the Macedonians in Republic of Macedonia or the Macedonians in Pirin (due to historical ignorance and almost 100 years of isolation from the other Macedonians).
EU has lots of laws and directives for the "autochthonous" people which Macedonians should be informed of. I talked once to a lady ethnic Croatian and Austrian citizen: she told me that in her Croatian community in Austria they speak a dialect of the official Croatian language and this is the language they are teaching to their children. They even printed a vocabulary of their dialect.
All the propaganda of Vinozito is based on the idea that Macedonians are a minority of a "foreign" nation (something like the Albanians in Macedonia) but our people do not like this as they do not like to loose their local identity in favor of the identity of the Macedonians of the Republic of Macedonia.
We should stress on the similarities among all the Macedonian groups and work on that and not try to make "homogeneity" with one imposed official identity for all the Macedonians.
I personally think that if we had the human and community rights that you Macedonians in the Diaspora have, our people would be very happy! This does not include of course the obligatory teaching of the official language of the Republic of Macedonia, as Vinozito insists! It could include though some EU laws which allow to autochthonous populations (like the Macedonians in Greece) to get their language to be taught in the public schools were it is requested by the inhabitants.
A Macedonian Party or organization should be near the people to help them to keep and develop their local ethnic identity and by doing so, help the Greek people to come to know us and show that Greeks have nothing to fear from Macedonians or any other ethnic, linguistic, religious community that exist in Greece and are part of the Greek State and not something outside it.
What Vinozito is doing now is to attack all the Greek institutions and governments, always in a very belligerent way that makes more difficult for our people to be accepted by the majority of Greek society.
Comment