The Government withdrew its proposal to ban family gatherings with more than four visitors, after the opposition VMRO-DPMNE party objected to the proposal. The Parliament Healthcare Committee was reviewing the draconian proposal from Healthcare Minister Venko Filipce today, in a debate that descended into ugly partisan infighting.

VMRO representatives told Filipce that the proposal is clearly unconstitutional, especially after Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski said that he would sent police patrols into homes and urged neighbors to report if they see a larger gathering. After the proposal was withdrawn, VMRO-DPMNE said it will attend the plenary session where the law is expected to be adopted in an expedited procedure.

Much of the discussion included Filipce descending down to the role of a partisan activist and defending the dismal record of his SDSM party, on whose watch Macedonia has the worst death and infection rates in the Balkans. Filipce lashed out at several female VMRO members of Parliament calling them “emotional” and justifying the poor state of the healthcare system with alleged misplaced investments under the VMRO term, when Filipce was adviser to Minister Nikola Todorov.

This Government is largely the same as before, was appointed on August 30, and it took you 40 days to prepare this law, which you now claim is being delayed by VMRO. And you give us an incomplete proposal with many nebulous and clearly misplaced proposals, said Dafina Stojanoska from VMRO-DPMNE.

The opposition party is proposing that the current Committee on infectious diseases is replaced with a politically broader institution that would give recommendations the Government will be asked to adopt automatically. The current committee openly politicized its work, including with the incident when its member doctor Arben Ziberi boasted that he got the borders opened so that more ethnic Albanian votes can come and vote ahead of the July 15 elections. Ziberi was kicked from the committee, himself contracted the virus, recovered, was elected to Parliament from the DUI party and today attended the hearing on Filipce’s proposed law without a mask. The Minister ignored this blatant violation of protocols.