Members of the Parliament Committee on mandates and immunity were evenly split on Saturday over whether to revoke immunity from former Parliament Speaker Trajko Veljanoski, who is being charged with terrorism by the SDSM Government.

The Committee was divided 4 to 4 in the vote, while one ruling majority member, Agim Sakiri from the DUI party, was absent. It is expected that the request would still be sent before the full Parliament as early as Sunday. If approved, it would be the unprecedented eight time the Parliament has revoked immunity from an opposition member of Parliament, while about 15 opposition representatives have been charged with various crimes in total.

Veljanoski was deposed by SDSM and DUI, shortly after the Parliament incident in April 2017, when thousands of protesters, angry at the irregular vote set by these two parties to appoint former Albanian guerrilla commander Talat Xhaferi as new Speaker, stormed the building. SDSM claims that the incident was planned by the VMRO-DPMNE party and has used the broad court case it started to target VMRO members of Parliament and blackmail them to vote in favor of renaming Macedonia into North Macedonia.

Two former Government Ministers who were charged along with Veljanoski, Mile Janakieski and Spiro Ristovski, were sent to the Shutka prison on Wednesday, and were attacked by imprisoned Albanian terrorists on Thursday, resulting in injuries.