Macedonia Square in the capital Skopje

Macedonia fed bronze lions with children breakfasts

Macedonia once again is full not only with cultural news, financial crises, but also by political incidents. Recently occurred anti-corruption scandal connected with the installation of bronze statues of lions on one of the bridges in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, in the framework of Skopje 2014 project immediately attracted massive public attention.

Four giant bronze lion statues were created by local sculptors Dukovski and Janev. The first pair of sculptures, which lightered taxpayers' wallets, was established in Skopje in the last ten days of August and wasn’t accounted to evolve into a scandal afterwards.

The first shock of the Macedonian public was embodied in a variety of works of black humor, praising the "beauty and elegance" of the bronze monsters in the press and in the Internet. Anatomical imbalances, which were given to it by the sculptors of these creations have been nicknamed as "realistic" and spawned countless jokes on a variety of topics, from huge disproportionate heads to tiny sizes of virtually absent reproductive organs.

Sculptures, installed in the capital of Macedonia, were given the popular nickname "castrati", which underlines not only the absence of men's accessories, but also the overall incompleteness and angularity of artistic composition. The second pair of bronze lions has caused sarcasm of public and installation of the sculpture, which took place on August 31, was called "Attack of the killer robots."

The second wave of scandal, probably the least pleasant for the creators of sculptures, flashed up during the television interview of the sculptors, touching the question of costs for installation of bronze monsters. Sculptor rather indelicately denied answering the question about the value of the monuments, which aroused a storm of indignation of the public. Subsequently, parents that are protesting the government's decision to terminate funding free lunches at school in connection with the financial crisis ironically emphasized that "the lions have eaten children's breakfasts".

Under public pressure, the local municipality was forced to announce the official cost of installing four bronze statues in the center of Skopje. According to official data on materials and the creation of each pair of voracious monsters were spent 68000-74000 euros. These amounts do not include the cost of ground preparation and base and the installation of sculptures, which amounted to 1500 euros per square meter. Of course, the authorities discreetly didn’t announced the number of the aforementioned square meters.

According to the rumors, the final amount of 2.3 million euros has been transferred to Florence, and spawned a killing joke that "... the rich people of Macedonia help the poor Italians to deal with the consequences of the global financial crisis".

At the moment the lions are installed and open for the public. Accommodation in hotels and apartments of the capital of Macedonia Skopje can be ordered online on http://en.poezdka.de

translated / ru.poezdka.de

Date: 01/10/2010