After the Government announced that it will accept the highly unpopular Constitutional Court decision to increase salaries of public sector officials by whopping 78 percent, former Parliament Speaker Trajko Veljanoski came out with an explanation how this move can be avoided – if the Parliament wants to.

The Government and the ruling coalition say that they disagree with the salary hike but are doing nothing to change the law and reverse the move, and are practically “allowing” the Constitutional Court to give them all a huge wage increase.

The first freeze of salaries of public sector officials was done in 2009, as result of the economic crisis, with amendments to the law on salaries of appointed officials. If you wait for the Government to prepare a draft law and send it to Parliament, you will wait forever, given the attitude of the Government toward this issue. Instead, the Parliament can convene a coordination and prepare a law on changes of the salaries, and the Parliament services can be done in an hour. This can then be adopted in Parliament on the same day, Veljanoski said.

He ironically congratulated to the Constitutional Court on giving the office holders a huge increase in salaries and said that it is clear that the whole move was orchestrated by the Government.