I was a student and I had just turned 21. On the night of September 8 when I arrived on the square, it was already full and in anticipation of the results of the referendum. As we stood and waited for the results to be announced, I remember commenting that we were actually making a state that day. We will have our own state – Macedonia, I proudly added, former Prime Minister Gruevski wrote on Facebook.

In fact, we had a formal legal state since August 2, 1944, and on that day on September 8, 1991, we just declared independence. But as part of Yugoslavia we had no sense that we really had a state Macedonia, at least not my generation. All major decisions were made in Belgrade, and those in Skopje were previously formally or informally coordinated or approved by Belgrade. De jure we had a state, de facto as if we didn’t have it or at least we felt like we didn’t fully have our own state. But that “de jure” created with lot of blood and sacrifice on August 2, 1944, actually helped us a lot on September 8, 1991, at the first historic opportunity, without human casualties, with brave government and parliament, a brave VMRO-DPMNE party and a decisive generation of Macedonians and citizens of Macedonia to become except “de jure” and “de facto” – an independent and sovereign state. In the last few years, this “de facto” has again been somehow questioned, weakened, pale, fragile and quite wrecked. It is not like in Yugoslavia, but it is not like a truly independent and sovereign state making decisions. We’re still waiting for someone else’s approval for everything, to tell us how, when, and the like, he says.

He also asks where does this need to ask for someone else’s approval about everything come from.

Gruevski congratulated September 8, Independence Day and said that this holiday should remind us that we are an independent and sovereign state, that we should strive for more, not less sovereignty and that we should be much more independent, at least as much as the countries whose company we strive to join.