In an interview with Radio Free Europe, Parliament Speaker Afrim Gashi said that the newly created coalition between VMRO-DPMNE, VLEN and ZNAM does not violate the 2001 Ohrid treaty. DUI, which faces being relegated to the opposition for the first time since 2008, angrily insists that VLEN does not have legitimacy to represent the Albanians in the Government, and that VMRO should take DUI in instead.

Maybe they’ve forgotten about the May agreement that Ali Ahmeti concluded with Nikola Gruevski in 2008, which Ahmeti himself violated. This agreement (that the largest Macedonian party invites the largest Albanian party in the Government) was not made part of the Constitution. So, a Government is formed with 61 votes. VLEN has 107,000 votes, and has the legitimacy of the Albanians in this Parliament, Gashi said. DUI won 30,000 votes more, but its coalition includes parties that represent other ethnic groups, so now DUI and VLEN are involved in ugly disputes over who won “more Albanian votes” and who is the “legitimate Albanian representative”. DUI violated the May Agreement in 2017, when Ahmeti decided to form a coalition with SDSM and not with VMRO, which was the clear winner among ethnic Macedonians.

DUI, meanwhile, sent out a declaration to the “international community”, informing diplomatic representatives that “the inclusion of VLEN in the Government compromises the legitimacy of the Albanians and the other smaller ethnic groups”. Speaking before the Culture Center in Tetovo, Ahmeti asid that “the Ohrid Treaty must be respected – we are the legitimate representative of the Albanians and of the other ethnic communities chosen in the elections”.