H.E. Simone Filippini: ENDEAVORING FUTURE, NOT THE PAST

Countries that are successful in EU are only those countries who know how to build a consensus

H.E. Amb. Simone Filippini

The question of the political culture and the political dialogue is important for any country, though, of course, we, as representatives of the international community, are just observers in Macedonia. I think maybe some people sometimes regret that we are here, but we are here as friends.

We know, of course, also from our own countries, that democracy building is not just a static issue, to the contrary, it is dynamic. We all struggle with these issues that you are struggling with today that we discuss here today, so it’s not that we’d speak from superior position, we are friends, we want to struggle with you, we can learn from you and maybe you can learn something from us. To start with, it’s important that, as an Ambassador here today, I don’t seat here as some superior human being, but as a person from a different country, speaking to you as to fellow Europeans and as future partners in the EU and NATO.

It is possible to make distinctions between societies which are most of the time historically based, but which define also from which direction you come and the present political culture that prevails in society. You can make distinctions whether you work on basis of an individual or a family, more in cooperative sense or more being competitive, whether you are a hierarchically based society or egalitarian, top down - bottom up; whether you are a society based on reasoning or more on the basis of tradition, bringing more emotions into the game. The Dutch are egalitarian people. For instance, the Dutch society is often called a feminine one. There are societies that are rather called masculine, not that they are all males, but there are certain values that are being traditionally linked to males or being masculine, and that brings a completely different system of politics, which we often observe as a zero-sum game, rather then a win-win kind of attitude.

We, the Dutch people, live bellow the sea level, and we all have always had to fight against the water. Without a consensus-based cooperative system, we could have never survived. That has built us into a country, and has built our political system. But, that doesn’t mean that we all have to stay as we are, we are confronted with new challenges at the moment, with one and a half million newcomers in our society, most of them from non-western cultures, with completely different stands in life, coming from countries with entirely different political cultures and we need to find answers to this.

You are being confronted with having to become a full-fledged EU and NATO member state and that requires new ways of dealing and will in politics. You can not be a successful EU country if the political game is only striving for a zero-sum game. Countries that are successful in EU are only those countries who know how to build a consensus both inside their own countries and with their partners in the huge EU collective. This is huge machinery, finding compromises on essentially and very difficult issues on daily basis. That is, I think, how Macedonian politics should look at themselves, evaluate their behavior, which is a collective responsibility.

I sometimes see that politics here are not inclusive enough, not serious enough, in talking with one another, in really finding a sincere dialog, of high integrity, really trying to find each other on a common base. Same is with the opposition. Opposition parties also need to try finding a consensus on important issues of national interest with their fellow politicians of the ruling parties. Why not? This is how politics goes in any country and you see that those countries who can find their way in this in a successful manner are the most prosperous ones, the most successful ones in this world. I think there are still things to do on those levels in Macedonian politics; I think it includes all the Macedonian political parties who tend to follow each other in certain tabs of behavior. It’s a process, it takes time, it will cost a lot of efforts to change and you have to do it together.

Many societies are ruled by fear. I think that fear is the worst advisor in this case. The best advisor is to have courage to look into the future, to take the future as the point of departure. Not the past, especially not the past in this part of Europe. Then, try to built a successful society together.

(H.E. Simone Filippini is the Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands)