site.btaMPs in North Macedonian Debate Poorly, Do Not Accept Other People's Arguments, Report Shows

The quality of the discussions in the legislative body of the Republic of North Macedonia still does not meet the minimum score required to call the debates healthy, and on a scale of 1 to 10 the quality of the discussions in Parliament for the period January-June 2023 was rated 5.5, which is a lower score compared to that of July-December last year, data from a report by the country's Institute for Democracy “Societas Civilis” shows.

According to the analysis, the low rating of the parliamentary discussion is mainly due to the unwillingness of MPs to change their own positions due to better arguments presented in the discussion.

In 49% of the analysed discussions, MPs' statements were unsupported, and in 44% they merely expressed their positions. The results are from research, experience, documents, and other sources. Supporting arguments were used in 11% of the analysed discussions, which according to the Institute for Democracy report confirms the overall low level of argumentation.

Regarding the attitude of MPs towards their colleagues from other political parties, respect was expressed in 3% of the discussions, which is a decrease compared to the previous observation period, when respect was expressed in 17% of the cases.

The report's data also confirms the consistently low regard of MPs for the rights of marginalised groups across all observation periods; in 87.3% of their discussions, MPs did not refer to the rights of marginalised groups unless they were discussing a specific law or agenda item related to their rights.