The Social Democratic Alliance of Macedonia (SDSM) will not participate in the work of the Assembly for an indefinite period and it will not attend the assembly session on Saturday when the Parliament will vote on the new government, the SDSM Executive Committee decided at its session held in Strumica on Monday, Vreme reports.
“This is a difficult decision and it was absolutely not made under the influence of emotions. However, we feel that we cannot continue to be a décor in the Assembly because the opposition must not be a décor. We must show in practice that things are really out of control. Had we continued to function as though nothing was happening in the Assembly, we would have been an alibi to the Government, which wants to rule without any control,” SDSM leader Radmila Sekerinska said after the session.
SDSM decided to ask for a written agreement with the ruling VMRO-DPMNE with which the two parties would commit themselves to two things: that they will establish a system in which different opinions will be respected in the Parliament and that the principle of presumption of innocence will be observed, that is, that there are no more spectacular arrests and that people are not judged before the court passes its ruling.
SDSM will boycott the plenary sessions, the assembly committee sessions, and the international delegations, that is, it will not delegate representatives to the assembly work groups or to the parliamentary delegations to the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, and OSCE.
The members of the SDSM Executive Committee held an extensive discussion on this issue, justifying their decision with a number of reasons: the speedy ratification of laws, the new Assembly Rules of Procedure, and the manner in which the Macedonian police arrest senior officials of this party, that is, the detaining of Strumica Mayor Zoran Zaev.
“The Government is determined to eliminate the opposition and build a party-police state that will annihilate democracy. The parliamentarians hastily ratify government laws that they had not even read, while the citizens do not even know what these laws contain. The adoption of the new Rules of Procedure was the last straw. Never before has the Macedonian Assembly or any other European country ratified an Assembly Rules of Procedure without the presence of the opposition and without political consensus,” Emilijan Stankovik explained.
Prior to the start of the session of the Executive Committee, Sekerinska voiced confidence for the decision for withdrawal from the Parliament.
“If anyone had any dilemmas on Thursday or if anyone thought that we had gone too far with this decision, that which happened in the Assembly, when the Rules of Procedure was ratified in a tragic manner, in only 15 minutes, and without any debate, proved that we were right,” the SDSM leader stressed.
The SDSM Central Committee will meet this week to decide on the future steps. All that is known at the moment is that the SDSM parliamentarians will be in their offices in the assembly building and they will state their positions and views on the work of the Parliament and the laws ratified at press conferences and in statements.
The Liberal-Democratic Party also confirmed the decision to boycott the Parliament, while Tito Petkovski’s New Social Democratic Party stated that it would adopt a decision that would be in line with the decision of the coalition partners. The Liberal Party’s Stojan Andov also decided to boycott the Parliament.
