Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov is going to give this week VMRO-DPMNE leader Nikola Gruevski the mandate to compose the new government after the new Parliament was constituted over the weekend and Trajko Veljanoski was reelected Parliament Speaker, Utrinski vesnik reports.

However, the very first day of work of the new MPs went in a rather unpleasant atmosphere. About a hundred young people “embraced” the Parliament building in protest against police brutality. Holding hands, the protestors waited for the MPs to arrive at all entrances and booed President Ivanov, and MPs Zoran Stavreski, Gordana Jankuloska and Antonio Milososki as they entered the building.

The mandates of all 123 MPs (three from the diaspora for the first time) were verified and this time round the constitutive meeting went without a boycott in the attendance of all MPs from the government and the opposition, which was not the case the previous time when Menduh Thaci’s party boycotted the session.

The meeting was attended also by President Ivanov, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, a few cabinet members, representatives of the judiciary and the religious communities in Macedonia, as well as by the President of the State Election Commission, Boris Kondarko and representatives of the diplomatic corps.

In the new Parliament, the coalition led by VMRO-DPMNE has 56 seats, the opposition alliance led by SDSM 42, BDI 15, PDSH 8 and Rufi Osmani’s BDK, the party that came into being a few months before the elections, 2 MPs.