Interview with Idri Istrefi, candidate for Mayor of Struga

VOX Struga: What pushed you personally to run for Mayor of Struga?

Idri Istrefi: First of all I thank you for the opportunity you give me to express my views and assessments. The role of the media is very important in a society like ours, with many problems. As for my candidacy, i have long years on the ground, where trouble occurs and where the solution is needed. By this I mean that my personal has long been closely associated with the public. I stayed away from the media tables, I loved and worked where needed, without the presence of cameras. There is no greater motive for running when you witness families laughing one month a year, when your children come back and cry 11 other months. There is no greater impulse when you see someone getting rich overnight and everyone around them being poor. There is no stronger motive to take on this responsibility, when you see an extraordinary city like Struga emptied within a day when the summer ends and the emigrants leave. Everything is politicized, until the admission of children to the nursery. Here if the child is not at the right party there are times he is left out, without registering. People with employment have been taken hostage, as if it was not their ability and right to be employed, but the merit of the party! I am convinced that the time has come for Struga to breathe differently and return to its citizens. The time has come to say STOP to bad governance, theft, manipulation, blackmail, cORRUPTION, usurpation and above all the alienation of Struga's identity as a city of education and culture.

VOX Struga: Can you tell us how you feel about the post of mayor of a municipality?

Idri Istrefi: We thankfully have a team sense of work. I do not think I could do much of what I want on my own. Only I can change the power by vote, this yes, but only that much. The municipality is a serious and complex task and therefore without my team it is impossible to work.

In the municipality I will introduce the mentality of the servant of the people that in fact a mayor should be. The municipality should be a help to the citizen and not drag him for months and years for documents that he has a duty to make! The municipality is to make life easier for its citizens and not to complicate it. There is such a big misunderstanding of this work! Being proclaimed chairman has been interpreted as a kind of lucrative business that in fact it has been. They did not run, but have reigned. Now is the time for the right to come to the country. Running a municipality is a job that the people trust, it is a privilege to show that they believe, but it is a great responsibility that you should do well the work you have undertaken. It is enough to introduce the sense of honest work, of the joy of making Struga, of the normal municipality and not the mafia one and this city will flourish again.

VOX Struga: How do you see the cooperation with VMRO that you will have in this election?

Idri Istrefi: As an added force. We are a party that basically wants the well-being of the people and the development of the space where we live. History speaks to dark spots, but it is the duty of each of us to write bright dots on its pages. I personally believe in the maxim that there are no good or bad peoples, there are such people. Every ethnic group living in Struga loves the city as well, developed and safe. If you ask them where he lives, they would all respond: “in Struga”. Struga is the point of union, of great support and resumption!

VOX Struga: Do you have a message for everyone who will read this interview?

Idri Istrefi: Po. First I want to console all the families who have lost their people in Tetovo hospital. Our souls ache for this event and it is our duty that we are still alive to seek JUSTICE for them!

Secondly, I want to tell you all that Struga has really fallen into the depression of poverty and abuse, but the Struga people have decided that without language distinction, head, customs and traditions, from the village, the city to the farthest continent where they live, in 17 October come here to reborn Struga that Struga Are They. Because we will win and we will return Struga to the people of Struga.

And finally, I want to assure every citizen of Struga that I will be the mayor of all, both inside and outside the municipal building, in the yellow line of the city and in its most extreme village. I will be the guarantor of every right that belongs to the people of Struga in relation to the local government.   

VOX Struga: Thank you Mr. Idri Istrefi!

Idri Istrefi: It was a pleasure!