Ziadin Sela, leader of the Alliance of Albanians, called for early general elections after the outcome of Sunday’s Parliament session which Speaker Talat Xhaferi closed after midnight without allowing a vote on whether the immunity of his ousted predecessor Trajko Veljanoski should be revoked. Sela accused Xhaferi and the ruling coalition of losing moral credibility over the issue of the April 2017 incident in the Parliament, when Sela was the only member of Parliament to sustain serious injuries after the attack by a group of masked protesters.

We saw that Xhaferi is a good actor who doesn’t deserve to be the Speaker of the Parliament. The Government has lost its moral credibility because it violated the promise to institute rule of law in the country. Yesterday we witnessed an attack on the rule of law. This majority very easily agrees to pardon crime and corruption, as was seen in their amnesty law. If Xhaferi has an ounce of moral left, he should immediately call for early general elections, Sela wrote on his social media accounts.

The discussion was disrupted near the end of the session, when an argument erupted between SDSM member of Parliament Muhamed Zekiri and Speaker Xhaferi. SDSM members of Parliament like Zekiri, Aleksandar Kiracovski and Pavle Bogoevski today blamed Xhaferi for ending the session without putting Veljanoski’s immunity up for a vote. Zekiri, who leads SDSM efforts to undermine the share of the Albanian vote received by Xhaferi’s DUI party, was especially outspoken in this, evoking even the Muslim Prophet Muhamed in his criticism.

SDSM targetted Veljanoski as the next victim in its campaign against officials from the opposition VMRO-DPMNE party.  Veljanoski was charged with allegedly organizing the incident which began on April 27th 2017, when protesters burst into the Parliament after the SDSM and DUI parties staged an irregular vote to replace Veljanoski and appoint Xhaferi as the next Speaker. Sela was badly beaten in the ensuing chaos, while several SDSM members of Parliament also sustained light injuries. The case has been used by SDSM to file terrorism charges against a number of VMRO members of Parliament, who were later blackmailed with the charges until they agreed to vote to rename Macedonia into North Macedonia.

Veljanoski faced being sent to the Shutka prison, where a group of actual terrorists were making death threats against him and all other VMRO officials who face arrest. Last Thursday, the group attacked two former Ministers Mile Janakieski and Spiro Ristovski, who were charged along with Janakieski.