Filipce is worth the conditions: Leadership meeting without the law on defenders
Ethnic muscle testing, except for conditioning the leadership meeting, continued in the Parliament, where the law on defenders is stuck. After the SDSM blocked because the president of the Commission Ilire Dauti refuses to put the law on defenders on the agenda, now the European Front and Vredi are also blocking.
The leader of SDSM Venko Filipce received conditions instead of an answer to the question of whether the largest parties accept a leadership meeting on the topic of inter-ethnic relations, after the incidents with the national flag, as well as on security in the country. It's worth it delivered several conditions without which the leaders of the coalition Izet Mejiti, Arben Taravari, Bilal Kasami and Zeqiria Ibrahimi would sit at the table with Filipce, while the prime minister Hristijan Mickoski refused to answer whether he had thought about the leadership meeting requested by the opposition leader.
The deputy of Vredi Khalil Snopche says that there will be a leadership meeting if SDSM shows that it stands for consensus, and it will prove this if it withdraws the draft law on defenders.
- Filipce needs to show that he has the political will for consensus, and he will do that if SDSM withdraws the law on defenders, which has been creating tensions for several months. Representatives of the SDSM have already stated that they are not opposed to passing a law that will include, in addition to defenders, also former members of the ONA. At the leadership meeting, consensus should be reached on the law on fair representation and on the law on the use of the Albanian language. These topics were opened by the Constitutional Court, and the judges were chosen by the current opposition, and therefore a clear position from the SDSM on both laws is needed. If the Constitutional Court continues to decide by overvoting, then the question of introducing Badenter's principle in voting in the Constitutional Court should be opened at the leadership - says Snopce.
The Government, on the other hand, responded yesterday that Filipce should first officially request a meeting with the Prime Minister instead of doing it through the media. According to VMRO-DPMNE, they currently see no need for a leadership meeting.
Ethnic muscle-testing, except for conditioning the leadership meeting, continued in the Assembly of the Commission for Social Policy, where the law on defenders is stuck. After SDSM blocked the Commission, because the president of the Commission Ilire Dauti refuses to put the law on defenders on the agenda (for which she has already earned an interpellation from the Left), now the Commission has been blocked by the European Front and Vredi.
The blockade of the law on defenders by Doughty caused a complete blockade of the work of the Social Policy Commission by the SDSM, which through procedural remarks insists on discussing the defenders, which, in turn, blocks the adoption of the agenda.
The Social Policy Commission was stuck today by the deputies from the Albanian political bloc, because the law that was supposed to be debated - a proposal for a law to amend and supplement the Law on Mandatory Capital Funded Pension Insurance - was sent by the Government to the Assembly only in the Macedonian language. Whether or not this is a maneuver of the European Front and Vredi for them to block the committee instead of SDSM with the defenders is irrelevant, because the parliamentary committee is completely dysfunctional. The commission suspended its work until the Government starts submitting all laws in both languages.
