Tetovo is preparing to rename streets. On the list of 145 proposed names, number two is Dr Xhafer Sulejman. The Union of Veterans of the National Liberation and Anti-Fascist War of Macedonia says he was mayor of Tetovo, installed by the occupier in May 1941, and that he held the post until mid-1943.

That detail, they claim, is missing from the official description attached to the proposal. It contains his medical qualifications, they say - but not what he did during those two years.

What the objection says

The Union states that in July 1943 Sulejman received the fascist general Alberto Pariani with the city's highest honours. They also link him to the formation of the Albanian battalion Ljuboten, which collaborated with the occupier.

They point as well to the killing of the Kuzmanovski family from Tetovo, who according to their statement died on 7 June 1943, during a wedding in their own family home, killed by ballist gangs of the occupier.

After the liberation, they say, Sulejman was convicted by a competent court. Their conclusion is that naming a street after him would be "an act against the state and a crude attempt at the rehabilitation of fascism", and they are asking legislators to strengthen the regulations on street naming.

The working group and the procedure

According to the statement, the working group was formed by the municipal council on 12 August, and the Union claims it set up an illegitimate renaming commission. That is a second, separate question - about procedure, not about the person - and it is the one the local council could check in a day.

Naming a street is not a trifle, and it is not only symbolism. It is a decision that becomes an address on somebody's identity document, on somebody's company, on somebody's post, and it lasts for decades. Precisely for that reason the procedure should be verifiable and the accompanying biography complete.

What is missing is a document, not an opinion

The Union's claims are concrete and dated - dates, names, a court verdict. Those are things that can be checked in an archive, not things to be debated at a session.

If a verdict exists, it has a number and a year. If a document exists appointing a mayor in May 1941, it is in some archive. If those documents do not exist, the claim collapses on its own.

So the question for the Tetovo council is not whether to vote for or against - it is why the proposal reached the list with a biography that, according to those objecting, is missing two years. Historians exist, archives exist. The question is whether anyone asked them before the list of 145 names was printed.