One question cuts straight through yesterday's whole commotion over Skopje's water, and it does not come from a laboratory. Three weeks after the Lepenec river was covered in foam, the public still has no name of a polluter, no results from analyses, and nobody who has taken responsibility. The message about an alleged bacterium in the water, on the other hand, produced a culprit within hours - the opposition.

That is the objection put yesterday by Levica through its councillor in the Skopje City Council, Darja Mustafaoglu, after mayor Orce Đorđievski used an emergency press conference to deny the disinformation and describe the organised spreading of hysteria as „equal to a terrorist attack”.

A double standard with a calendar

Levica's argument is not about whether the water is safe - that has been established and documented. It is about speed. When it comes to a river polluted with visible foam, the responsible bodies spend three weeks with no announced conclusion. When it comes to a message circulating through chats, within hours there is a press conference, a list of profiles and a political culprit.

„If Đorđievski is already introducing the practice of determining without evidence who is behind a message, then by the same logic the public may also ask whether the message was perhaps released from circles close to DPMNE”, Levica says. That is a rhetorical counter, not evidence - but it shows exactly the trap anyone walks into when they name a culprit without proof. The argument can then be turned in any direction at all.

The opposition did not manufacture the mistrust

The strongest part of the reaction is the part with no party label on it. Citizens did not get scared because somebody ordered them to be scared, but because for decades they have watched politicised institutions, improvised appointments, loud promises with no resolution, and officials who are decisive only while the cameras are running.

That is the point at which even the best laboratory analysis does not help. If a person does not believe an institution will tell them when something is wrong, they will not believe it when it tells them everything is fine either. Trust is built with competence, transparency and accountability, not with temperament at a press conference.

Levica also takes issue with Đorđievski's narrative that DPMNE discovered Skopje eight months ago, recalling that Danela Arsovska was elected with their direct political support, that the party had the largest group of councillors and the council president, and that their subsequent split meant years of blockade that the people of Skopje paid for.

Party sniping is predictable and is not the news here. The news is that two things happened in the same city in the same month: a river turned white, and a city panic-bought water. Only for the second one is there a culprit.