English
The man who negotiated about the Macedonian identity and the Macedonian language has no credibility, said Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski, dismissing the statement from former Foreign Minister and DUI party official Bujar Osmani.
Osmani made an emotional call to Albanians in Macedonia, accusing the Government of undermining their rights – all made as part of the DUI campaign to boycott the local elections this fall. DUI, whose officials are facing major corruption allegations, is trying to increase ethnic tensions and says that it will boycott the local elections but also prevent even staging them in the majority Albanian areas if early general elections are not held at the same time. According to Osmani, the reasons for this call are the decisions of the Constitutional Court to end the controversial practice of hiring along ethnic preferences and to open a review of the law on the use of the Albanian language. Even though the Constitutional Court is staffed by judges elected by DUI and SDSM, DUI insists that these decisions are the fault of VMRO-DPMNE and its Albanian partner VLEN.
I heard the statement from Bujar Osmani and I suppose that it was given in coordination with DUI leader Ali Ahmeti. This constitutes interference in the judicial system, which is contrary to the modern democratic norms, especially the European democratic norms. I spoke with Foreign Minister Timco Mucunski this morning, who spoke with a large number of representatives of the international community in and outside ofthe country and some of them said that they have personally spoken to DUI representatives to convey their great disappointment. Politics are conducted on the table, you sit down and talk, Mickoski said.
As Foreign Minister, Osmani led the negotiations with Bulgaria over the identity, historical narrative and the language of ethnic Macedonians. The decision to have an ethnic Albanian representative of a largely Albanian party lead these negotiations was seen as highly controversial at the time.
