site.btaPresident Pendarovski: Opposition Calculated It Would Win on Anti-Bulgarian Rhetoric

The government of North Macedonia should have been more realistic as to whether the constitutional changes would be voted by the country's parliament, said President Stevo Pendarovski, according to whom the optimism of "some ministers" from the government of outgoing Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski did not help the process.

"After the adoption of the French proposal, there was not a single statement from an opposition MP that they would back the proposal to reach the two-thirds majority that was needed. Optimism is understandable if there is any real positive step forward. But there wasn't, the VMRO-DPMNE have stuck to the party line. It is clear that this issue will remain on the agenda after the elections and will have to be dealt with by the next government and the next parliament," Pendarovski said in an interview to Sloboden Pecat.

Pendarovski says he does not see how the constitutional changes will be voted on if the opposition wins the upcoming elections, since all their statements on the issue are "very radical - that they will not vote for this proposal and will try to renegotiate" the negotiating framework.

According to him, the negotiating framework should be well explained to the country's citizens, but for political reasons some parties have misrepresented its content.

"I also hear criticism from the opposition that if they had been asked, they would have helped for a better negotiating framework. I believe that VMRO-DPMNE made its own party calculation that only with anti-Bulgarian and essentially anti-European rhetoric, and quite often in the past year anti-Albanian rhetoric, will it win the next elections. They do not care about the fact that they have done irreparable damage to the opinion of the citizens in the country about Europe and inter-ethnic relations. By some logic of theirs, they will fix it when they come to power. But even when you are in opposition, you have to be politically responsible.

"After the elections, how are you going to improve the image of Europe, which has its shortcomings both towards the region and towards us, but because of the anti-European rhetoric of the opposition support for the EU has dropped to an unprecedented low level. It is difficult to go back when they say that Europe does not love us or, the key thesis of the opposition, that "Europe loves us only as Bulgarians". This is utter political nonsense, but it was said by senior members of the opposition party. Convincing 26 countries and Bulgaria to renegotiate the negotiating framework is a Sisyphean task. I wish them every success if they are able to improve the negotiating framework. But senior European officials say that such a thing is impossible," Pendarovski says.