Besides the scandalous vote on the PPO law on state prosecutors, Speaker Talat Xhaferi made another enormous blunder today, during the vote on a law on Council of prosecutors. This law accompanies the major law on state prosecutors, and it was supposed to be adopted under the Badinter rule, with an additional vote covering the members of Parliament who are ethnic minorities, and where a majority of votes was also needed.

Xhaferi announced that the law needs to be adopted with the Badinter rule, but then failed to follow up on that. VMRO-DPMNE member of Parliament Ilija Dimovski said that he noticed the omission, but given the earlier scandal during the PPO vote, decided to let the session end illegitimately as it began. The Badinter rule was introduced as part of the 2001 Ohrid peace treaty, to prevent adoption of laws without the approval of the ethnic minority representatives.

Xhaferi said that, if he made a mistake, it was inadvertent, and he is sorry. His office followed up with a statement that Xhaferi made a mistake. This will make the PPO law even less legitimate and applicable. Dimovski said that the two laws are linked and one can’t work without the other.

This means that this law was also not approved by the Parliament. We call on President Pendarovski not to sign this law. If he does, he will be violating the Constitution, Dimovski said.