The speculations among the public are getting louder that Afrim Gashi’s Alternative might join the SDSM /DUI coalition and thus secure the majority of the government after BESA left the coalition. After the drama that took place last week, from which the ratio of MPs in the Parliament is 60:60, SDSM sources announce that the majority of the government is secured with Alternative joning the Government.
Such information was especially heated after the leader of Alternative, Gashi accepted the invitation for talks with Zoran Zaev. For now, according to sources in Alternativе, there are two camps and a decision is awaited by the party bodies on whether to join a new parliamentary majority led by SDSM or to remain in opposition. According to sources, one of the camps reminds leader Gashi that Alternative has based its political rhetoric for years on criticism of the government and DUI as part of it.
With this situation, the word of Gashi and Alternativе are put to the test. Gashi, in August last year after the parliamentary elections, stressed that it is important for Albanians to have a healthy opposition, and that would be either they as a coalition or DUI.
Gashi then said that Alternative could not be part of the same government with DUI.
We do not want to be part of the Government with any political party. When that offer, program and format comes to the table, then we would have a clear answer. Our part has been said, we have clearly stated what our positions are. We are correctly positioned both in relation to DUI and in relation to the Macedonian political parties, we do not want to either favor or handicap anyone, said Gashi in August 2020 on the ” Samo vistina” show and added that Alternative cannot agree on a government without the Alliance for Albanians, with which they jointly ran in the parliamentary elections, and continued the coalition in the local elections this year.
This position of Alternative was repeated after the coalition of SDSM and DUI became official.
The government of SDSM and DUI will be illegitimate for the Albanians and will not last long, Alternative and Alliance said then, after the leaders of SDSM and DUI agreed on a new ruling coalition.
According to them, DUI won by ballot stuffing, threats and blackmail and deceived the voters by immediately giving up their main pre-election promise for Albanian Prime Minister, due to which they received votes. The coalition of both parties then announced fierce resistance against DUI.
We will fight to overthrow this illegitimate government in a legal way, said the leaders of the Albanian opposition parties in August 2020.
Gashi was even harsher when commenting on DUI’s pre-election promises.
All legitimacy is lost because you collected votes based on that promise. If we do not restore this component of democracy, the publicly expressed word will lose its meaning. We no longer know how to behave in front of the citizens, whether in the next elections we will lie, whether we will manipulate, said Gashi.
In March 2021, the leader of Alternative, Afrim Gashi, again indicated that they would participate in the Government only if DUI is the opposition.
If the offer is to form a government until local elections and then go to new parliamentary elections, we can talk. We want to get out of the crisis. And of course, not with DUI. We will not be part of the Government with DUI, Gashi said on March 8, 2021 on the “Click Plus” show on TV21.
Alternative does not accept joint rule with SDSM and DUI, was the position of the Secretary of Public Relations of Alternative, Zeqirija Ibrahimi given in October this year.
We did not ask to join. I see no reason for anyone to accept inarticulate requests. There was no request for Alternative to join the parliamentary majority. We are in the process of forming a new parliamentary majority, part of which will not be those who are now in a government that almost does not exist at all, said Zeqirija Ibrahimi.
The first signals of Alternative’s change of mind for participation or not in the government together with DUI started in the dramatic days before the vote of no confidence in Zaev’s government. In those days, the MP from Alternative, Skender Rexhepi-Zaid, started to protest and announced that he would not vote for the fall of DUI if Levica participates in the same initiative. This attitude of his was met with great resistance and resentment from the activists, supporters and sympathizers of Alternative. Among the loudest of them was their branch in the Municipality of Cair.
Representatives of the Alternative branch in Cair said that “they held an emergency meeting regarding the created political situation. After the meeting, the branch announced with a unanimous position that Alternative should vote for the overthrow of the Government of SDSM and DUI, reported the Albanian language news agency “Zurnal”.
It reported that the branch decided decisively that: “If the MPs of Alternative do not vote against the Government of SDSM and DUI, then they will stop their political activity.”
Whether the rhetoric with lies is just a feature of Zoran Zaev or it is already contagious remains to be seen. Will the leader of Alternative, Afrim Gashi, stick to the words he said that he will not participate in the Government in which DUI also participates or will he trample them, will be shown by the outcome of his meeting with Zaev.
But one thing is obvious, and that is that the membership of Alternative is largely against participation in such a government together with DUI and possible additional turbulence and possible split in the party which itself arose with the separation from the BESA movement.
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