Old habits die hard.
The biggest financial scandals in Macedonian history that included banking pyramid schemes, outright stealing and emptying people’s bank accounts (TAT, Komercijalna Banka…), issuing 11, sometimes 10 pensions per year, drastically cutting social benefits… the list is endless, but each scandal had a common denominator. It occured when the communists, now calling themselves Social Democrats (SDS) were in charge.
This morning when pensioners attempted to pick up their pensions from Tutunska and Stopanska Banka, they were only allowed to do so until 8:30am(?!). After, the Bank informed the huge queue of pensioners that the Ministry of Labour and Social Justice and the Ministry of Finance have somehow reversed the money from people’s accounts and they were no longer available. What?
This infuriated the pensioners who refused to leave the queue in front of Stopanska and Tutunska Banka.
Numerous media outlets were not successful in their attempt to contact Tevdovski who leads the Ministry of Finance and Mila Carovska in charge of Labour.
Pensioners who were lucky enough to pick up their pensions before 8:30am say instead of getting 80 denars higher pensions as SDS told them a week ago, they received 300 denars lower pensions. The first tier of pensioners who receive above average pensions received a drastic cut of 3,000 denars. According to Zajko Zaev and Tevdosievski, old people don’t really need money to live.
We all anticipated pension and social benefits cuts, however we really felt Zajko Zaev and his mafia clan would wait until October (after the elections) to do this.
In Macedonia there are over 250,000 pensioners. What is that the SDS needs the money so bad for? If one attempts basic math, 250,000 pensioners * 25 euro average cut on pensions, the SDS is looking at taking over 6.25m euros/month. Now the question is, what is the SDS going to use this money for?
Where the SDS forced to do this move in order to finance the purchase of votes for the upcoming elections?