North Macedonia’s President Stevo Pendarovski and the opposition have traded accusations after Friday's parliamentary sitting failed to vote on the only item on the agenda - the adoption of a proposal about the need to vote on constitutional amendments on the path to the EU.
In an interview for Sitel TV, Pendarovski said that the opposition’s concept is to come to power and only then think about who they can obtain parliamentary majority with for the vote on the constitutional changes. By voting against the adoption of Parliament’s Friday agenda, the opposition showed that the European concept in the country has failed, Pendarovski noted.
“What are VMRO-DMPNE proposing instead of what failed today [at Friday’s sitting]? What is the alternative that the opposition is proposing? If the European concept for the country is failing, I am asking whether we are going back to the old debate of 1991-1992 on where we are headed: West or East? Who is the East? I continue claiming that what we have on the table and what the opposition is needlessly calling ‘a Bulgarian dictate’ is actually a French proposal and a European negotiating framework that is the best for the country,” North Macedonia’s President argued. He added that Bulgaria’s initial demands three years ago were about “language, identity, history, occupants, administrators”, whereas now the condition for the country’s EU membership is just an amendment to the Constitution to add six more peoples, including Bulgarians, to the seven already in it. The opposition voted against that on Friday, as if that would ruin North Macedonia.
Pendarovski noted that he does not care what his Bulgarian counterpart Rumen Radev and Bulgarian politicians would say, because North Macedonia is negotiating with the EU.
VMRO-DMPNE reacted to Pendarovski’s interview in a position reading that he should accept the fact that “over 80% of people are against constitutional changes under Bulgarian dictate”. “The people is not paying him to behave arrogantly but to defend the national and state interests,” the position reads further.
According to the opposition, Pendarovski is using this type of rhetoric to get nominated for president for the elections in 2024. “If he was capable, he would not have allowed North Macedonia to fall into Bulgaria’s trap, in which we will either negotiate endlessly or get assimilated,” VMRO-DMPNE stated.
At a news conference here on Saturday, VMRO-DMPNE leader Hristijan Mickoski said that there is no price for which his party would agree to the constitutional changes under Bulgarian dictate, and not a single second more should be spent on the matter. He described as treacherous and losing Prime Minister Kovachevski’s claim that the constitutional changes are a proposal of North Macedonia made under no dictate. Were it a Macedonian proposal, it would have been legitimized by citizens in elections or a referendum, Mickoski argued.
His party sees early elections as the only solution to the current political crisis. After the elections, VMRO-DMPNE will propose “a patriotic, relatively speaking, exceptionally right solution that will preserve, protect, and impose Macedonia’s interests”.
/DS/
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