Ahmeti: The VMRO-VLEN "mono-ethnic" government destroys the Ohrid Agreement

2024-06-02 17:40:33, Kosova & Bota CNA

Ahmeti: The VMRO-VLEN "mono-ethnic" government destroys the Ohrid

The parties of the European Front, led by the Democratic Union for Integration (BDI), adopted on Sunday in Tetovo, as they called it, a declaration against the "mono-ethnic government" in North Macedonia.

The head of DUI, Ali Ahmeti, said that the new parliamentary majority between the party that won the elections, VMRO DPMNE, and the VLEN coalition, which consists of four Albanian parties, "does not represent the legitimacy" of the Albanians from the May 8 parliamentary elections.

VMRO DPMNE and the VLEN coalition are expected to form the new Macedonian Government in the coming weeks.

In the May elections, the European Front - which includes four parties from other entities - won 18 deputies, four more than VLEN.

Ahmeti claims that in the elections in North Macedonia, the competition takes place between the parties of the two largest ethnic groups and that the winners of the elections in the Macedonian and Albanian communities should form the new institutions.

"We state the indispensability of implementing consensual democracy in accordance with the spirit of the Ohrid Agreement and the Constitution of North Macedonia... The partners of the governing coalition must be determined by the political will of the two largest communities in the country, Albanians and Macedonians, as well as legitimate representatives of other communities expressed in free, fair and democratic elections. This is a customary right implemented in our country, which enables legitimacy, functional democracy, social cohesion, consensuality and fair representation in decision-making", said Ahmeti, reading the statement approved by the parties of the European Front.

But VLEN says that DUI cannot claim the legitimacy of the Albanian vote, since four parties of other entities in North Macedonia that won votes on behalf of the coalition in the parliamentary elections were part of the European Front.

"Disregarding legitimacy enables the establishment of ethnic hegemony and represents humiliation towards Albanians, Turks, Roma, Bosniaks and others. This mono-ethnic majority violates the legitimacy of other ethnic communities, burdens coexistence, democracy and should not be allowed by all of us together", said Ahmeti.

He said that by not respecting the "legitimacy of the vote, it means going back, undoing the common achievements so far" so he called for this not to happen because as he said "we all have responsibility for the peace, security, stability of the country and our region".

The head of the DUI said that the statement signed on Sunday by the European Front "will be sent to the international deployment centers, Brussels, Washington, London, Paris, the countries of the region, in order to increase attention to the direction in which the Agreement is being endangered of Ohrid achieved with sacrifice and blood in North Macedonia".

In North Macedonia until 2017, there was an unwritten rule that governments were formed by the winning Albanian and Macedonian parties, regardless of their program orientations.

The Democratic Union for Integration, as the winner of the Albanian elections, was part of the Government, both with the SDSM and VMRO DPMNE, which won the elections among the Macedonian electorate.

This rule continued until 2017, when the Government was formed by SDSM even though it had lost the elections to the Macedonian electorate.

She managed to form the parliamentary majority with the votes of the Albanian parties and then formed the Government by removing from power VMRO DPMNE - which was led by Nikola Gruevski at the time.

After that, VMRO DPMNE has announced several times that the "winner with winner" rule will no longer apply./ VOA