In his emotional farewell to Macedonia. Harald Schenker shared his insight on the local civil society:

"Let’s now get to my favourite, the so-called civil society, some of them my friends and colleagues, others people I worked with, and others, finally, people I tried to work with. To all of them I have harsh words: civil engagement is not a job.

Civil engagement cannot be equated to euros. As long as Macedonia’s civil society sector continues merely to be a job-generating machine, you cannot expect social change, except for those working in the sector, of course.

The new, donor-driven bourgeoisie has installed itself comfortably and conformably in the centre of society, from where it aspires to more and learns to despise the have-nots, while not so secretly living in fear of being next to join those have-nots - if they are found too critical either of the power structures or the donors themselves. This is the material that kills social change."

I've written in the past on the same subject, although from a different point of view. Needless to say I agree with what Harald wrote. I think it would be a safe bet to say that most [all?] of the ex-YU countries have similar problems [or failures] of their civil society. A 2006 paper [dead link to pdf 'From the Civil sector to Civil society'] from Ismet Sejfija has some sharp commentary as well:

"In Bosnia-Herzegovina, people working in civil society organisations who analyse developments in this sector often talk about “projectomania”. The term denotes an uncritical attitude by NGOs whose entire programme of activities revolves around project funding, and whose priority is to develop projects that focus on compliance with the sponsors’ criteria, often without considering their practical relevance and viability."

The reason why I'm referencing all these writings is my stumble upon couple of new Macedonian NGO projects in the last week. The first is called "I react" and is a service for reporting municipal communal problems, and the second is called "Follow the money" and is a service for tracking municipal taxes and expenditures. Both caught my attention because I was already familiar with two other civil society projects that more-or-less provided the same services: "Repair it" and "Fiscal monitor". [It should be noted that the "react" people stated that their service had significant differences from "repair"].

So, if my memory is not faulty, these two are not the only ones having doubles. And this is the research proposal: In the given pool of donors in the country, try to find out if they coordinate and collaborate on granting funds to civil society. Do they keep an eye on 'reinventing the wheel'? How many double projects are there so far and what is their success rate?

By the way, if you are reading this and decide to apply for a research grant, please leave a comment so someone else doesn't do the same thing and we end up with two reports. ;-)

It should be said with as few words as possible: Macedonia's newly proposed law on media allows censorship. It is as simple as that.

But here is the fine print: As far as public knowledge goes, most media in the country are already owned or controlled by the government or pro-government businessmen. If a story is not supposed to be run - it wont be, as we have seen on numerous times so far. Press freedom has plummeted in recent years. And, in the strangest turn of events [and as far as the official investigation goes without any foul play], Nikola Mladenov died and with him, the fate only independent or pro-opposition media outlet hangs by a thread.

So, by the time this law is enacted there might not be anything left to censor. Nevertheless, it is the murkiest of scenarios. There is little hope that the law can be halted in Parliament and even less in the Constitutional court which is postponing decisions on 'hot' issues. Journalists are divided on the issue of censorship and the profession at worst and scared for their job and paycheck at best.

Thus, another principled battle of huge proportion lands in the laps of couple of Internet activists, free speech groups and few journalists who, at least for now, ride on the free waves of the Internet. What [can we do] now?