English
Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said today that he has informed international partners about attempts by the Albanian opposition DUI party to create destabilization. DUI organized protests in Skopje yesterday, pointing to a minor issue of the bar exam being held in Macedonian only. Protesters carried Albanian and an occassional American flag and shouted that they only speak Albanian – the judicial system operates in Macedonian but parties in the cases are entitled to translation.
Their demands are one thing, but the international standards are something else, and we must uphold then. If we really want to act in a European fashion, we must respect the laws and the Constitution. We have a negative opinion from the Venice Commission about bilingualism in the judiciary. And we have no resources to implement it. Their strong recommendation was that we go back to the languages law from 2008-2009. Meanwhile, students study the law in their native language, in this case in Albanian. We saw a large number of opposition activists and officials at the protests, which gives them a political angle, and we have notified our NATO and EU allies about these attempts of the opposition to, in a sense, create instability. I don’t think that was met with approval from the high international community representatives, said Mickoski.