Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani used the press conference scheduled today to mark the anniversary of the Ministry to push the pre-election talking points of his DUI party and to attack the opposition VMRO-DPMNE party and VLEN coalition. VMRO and VLEN are discussing a post-election coalition, after the VMRO presidential candidate Gordana Siljanovska – Davkova scored a major victory over SDSM’s Stevo Pendarovski and the field of other presidential candidates (including Osmani) in the first round of the presidential elections.

VMRO-DPMNE is declaring VLEN as a desired partner in the future Government even before the people have voted on May 8th. This undermines the dignity of the Albanians and the citizens of all communities and creates a level of mobilization unseen in politics in a long time, Osmani insisted from the Foreign Ministry pulpit.

DUI claims that they represent the ethnic Albanians and should be an indispensable coalition partner in any future Government. But VLEN, which includes both politicians who split from DUI and parties who are historically opposed to DUI, won 83,000 votes in the first round of presidential elections, while DUI’s Osmani won 120,000. VLEN points out that DUI has added a number of parties representing other ethnic groups to its coalition, meaning that they both represent about equal numbers of Albanian voters and that the Albanian electoral will would be adequately represented in the next Government by VLEN. DUI officials are growing visibly nervous as VMRO-DPMNE confidently moves to the general elections on May 8th and continues to denounce DUI for its corruption and favors VLEN as its future partner. Osmani tried to compare the VLEN politicians to Albanian communist officials who cooperated with the Serbian led regime in Yugoslavia.

Mr. Mickoski brought back the feeling Albanians had during the 100 years of slavery, discrimination and subjugation. We are back to the times when Yugoslav Belgrade would tell voters that regardless what they want, Rahman Morina would represent them, and Morina cynically laughed at this. This is an attempt to disparage every Albanian and every citizen from the ethnic groups that had similar fate to the Albanians. This is not a matter of choosing between the European Front (DUI) and VLEN. That issue was resolved on April 24th and the people have spoken. Now we have a situation of mobilization of all against the attempts to undermine the dignity of the nations in this country, to form a Government even before the people have voted on May 8th. My message is that this (a coalition between VMRO and VLEN) won’t happen, said Osmani.

VMRO-DPMNE officials have noted that DUI used the weak position SDSM was in, especially after the 2020 elections when the two main Macedonian parties were essentially tied in the elections, to extract ever increasing concessions from SDSM. Macedonia ends the second DUI – SDSM term with the Albanian former UCK commander Talat Xhaferi as Prime Minister, DUI holding two of the three key departments – Finance and Foreign Ministry. Albanians holding half of all seats in Government – twice more than theirshare of population, and Albanian Government officials are negotiating major issues such as the Bechtel highway deal and even the talks on the Macedonian identity with Bulgaria. Ethnic Macedonian Government members appointed through SDSM assumed increasingly weaker and weaker departments, trading ministries such as healthcare and education for departments such as that of environmental issues.

A 2008 agreement between VMRO-DPMNE and DUI that the two parties support forming a Goverment of the parties that have won the most votes in the two major ethnic groups is no longer valid. It was violated by DUI in 2017, when this party formed a coalition with SDSM, even though SDSM lost the elections to VMRO-DPMNE.

This was emphasized by Izet Mexhiti, who is a former top DUI official and is now one of the leaders of VLEN, who reminded his former party that they themselves renounced the rule that the winner in the Albanian camp must be part of the next Government.

Maybe it was the right thing to do at the time, for the strategic interests of the country, but when you break a rule, then you can’t ask others to obey that same rule. That rule is no longer in force. And now, after 20 years in power, confronted with the strength of VLEN, Ali Ahmeti turns for salvation to other ethnic groups, the Turks, Roma and Bosniaks. That is legitimate, but it also means that Ahmeti can’t declare that he is the only Albanian option. VLEN is now the only purely Albanian option. Ahmeti evokes the Albanian spirit, but he’s adding the votes of other ethnic parties to his numbers. So, on May 8th, we will have te highest number of Albanian voters and the most Albanian members of Parliament, Mexhiti said.