Minister Nikola Dimitrov appoints ambassadors outside the MoFA rules at the wrong time, by politicizing the election. Macedonia’s diplomatic union has strongly criticized MoFA leadership for conducting an election procedure for sending diplomats to diplomatic and consular posts, Alfa reported.

Only a week before the interim government is formed, 18 diplomats and 2 administrators were elected. Despite suspicions that referrals in the pre-election period are easily susceptible to politicization, the Union is of the opinion that such a procedure is utterly unprincipled, given that only two years ago, in a similar situation with reverse roles, the referral abroad of already twenty selected diplomats was stopped, the diplomatic union told the TV station.

Alfa has already reported that ambassadors with dual citizenship are among the elected ambassadors, contrary to the Foreign Affairs law. In addition to Professor Miso Dokmanovic, who also has a potential for conflict of interest since he was part of the committee that decided on Dimitrov’s daughter’s scholarship to study abroad, there are other ambassador candidates who have or had dual citizenship. Alfa contacted Svetlana Geleva, who is due to be sent to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. She confirmed that she had Montenegrin citizenship but renounced it, and when we asked for evidence of such a thing, she told us to contact the MoFA Public Relations Office for further details. Otherwise, yesterday Pendarovski warned that the law is clear and that he does not intend to sign decrees for referring ambassadors if they have other citizenship besides Macedonian.

Union sources, meanwhile, told Alfa that there is one hoxha from Debar among the 18 ambassadors who, while having nothing to do with the diplomatic service, is still preparing for an important diplomatic mission. They say that for the sake of Macedonian diplomacy, it is high time to stop the practice of double standards and establish permanent rules of the game, regardless of the current political conjuncture. They are demanding that the three processes that are persistently pushed into the pre-election period – the passage of a new Foreign Affairs Law, the appointment of diplomats – to top immediately and continue only after parliamentary elections.