Macedonia’s strategic goals – membership of NATO and the EU, the 20th anniversary of Macedonia’s independence, the 10th anniversary of the Framework Agreement, as well as the census that should be taken in April this year - will be the main topics of the leaders’ meeting that President Ivanov scheduled for 21 January.
His office has already sent invitations to the leaders of VMRO-DPMNE, SDSM, BDI, PDSH and Demokracia e Re but it is still uncertain whether all are going to attend the meeting to be held in the Jasen reserve.
“The objective of the meeting is continuing President Ivanov’s regular consultations with the most relevant political parties,” his office said.
The responsibilities and issues arising from the report of the European Commission on Macedonia’s progress will be debated as well.
VMRO-DPMNE, SDSM and BDI said their leaders would attend the meeting. Sources from the largest opposition party say that they do not have great expectations from the meeting considering that the previous meetings did not produce any serious debate about crucial issues either.
The opposition Albanian parties, whose leaders Imer Selmani and Menduh Thaci, have been invited to the meeting too, are yet to decide whether to attend the meeting and whether to raise certain of their own demands on that occasion.
Demokracia e Re officials say they still insist on taking a parallel census in the diaspora. PDSH has never attended a leaders’ meeting since being an opposition regardless of whether it was organized by Ivanov or Gruevski. They started boycotting the meetings in protest against Selmani’s presence.
President Ivanov’s office has no explanation why Selmani has been invited to a meeting with the leaders of the four major political parties considering that Demokracia e Re has only four parliamentary seats. Although NSDP has five, the office says Tito Petkovski’s party has not been invited because of being part of SDSM’s bloc. As for LDP, which has an identical number of seats as Demokracia e Re, they have no explanation.
