A state celebration for 35 years of independence. Millions of euros of public money. And at it - a flag that is not the state flag of Macedonia.

The government explained that yesterday as an "art installation". The opposition today asked for names, invoices and accountability.

What SDSM is asking for

SDSM's secretary for international cooperation, Andrej Zernovski, used a press conference to ask the government to publish four things: which company made the flag, who was in charge of the visual performance, how much the entire celebration cost, and who will take responsibility.

"At their official organised celebration of 35 years of the country's independence, paid for with millions of euros of public money, Mickoski and his government humiliated the state and humiliated its citizens," Zernovski said, adding that instead of an apology we got a "tragicomic explanation" that what we saw was an art installation.

Zernovski also pulled out the law. Article 4 of the Law on the Use of the Coat of Arms, the Flag and the Anthem clearly prescribes how the state flag may be used, and Article 30 provides for misdemeanour liability if the organiser of a public event displays the wrong flag by mistake or through ignorance.

Here the opposition is right - and that is exactly why it should be checked

The question "which company made it and what did it cost" is precisely the question an opposition should be asking, regardless of which party happens to be in opposition. A public procurement for a state celebration is a document that exists. The contractor has a name. The invoice has an amount. If the government publishes those three pieces of information, the subject closes in a day.

If it doesn't publish them - then the question becomes more interesting than the flag itself.

Note too what the law itself says: liability exists even when the error is "by mistake or ignorance". So the excuse "we didn't mean to" is not a defence provided in Article 30 - it is precisely the case that article covers.

Where the party fight overshoots the question

The other half of the appearance is a different genre. Zernovski claims the government is carrying out a "revision of key historical facts" because the celebration left out NATO membership, UN membership and EU candidate status - because, as he put it, VMRO-DPMNE had no part in any of those achievements.

That is a purely party settling of accounts over who has the right to sign which historical date, and in Macedonia that argument has run for decades without a single winner. The symbols are not the property of whichever party was in power when they were adopted - they were voted through in parliament on 11 August 1992, with votes from several sides.

The basics remain: there is a law, there is an article with penalty provisions, there is a public procurement with a contractor and an amount. That isn't a matter of interpretation, but of a document that will either be published or won't.