PACE DELEGATION URGES OPPOSITION TO RETURN TO PARLIAMENT
admin1 – April 30, 2015 – 2:43pm

The current political situation in the Republic of Macedonia was in the focus of the meetings that the Macedonian authorities had with the delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

The chairman of the Monitoring Committee, Sefan Schennach, the rapporteur on the post-monitoring dialogue with the Republic of Macedonia, Robert Walter, and the Chairman of the Socialist Group in the Parliamentary Assembly, Andreas Gross, considered all the possibilities over the past two days for restoring political dialogue in the country.

The three PACE officials argued that the legal aspect of the crisis should be kept apart from the political one.

“They appeal for dialogue between all political stakeholders and believe the Parliament with all its committee is the best venue for talks. If necessary, ad hoc committees should be set up to table those issues. However, dialogue has to be conducted in institutions.

“They believe it’s incomprehensible that MPs elected by the citizens should not go to work for 12 months and yet be paid salaries and bear no responsibility. Therefore they argue that the opposition MPs should either return or have their terms suspended under the Constitution and the Parliament’s Rules of Procedure,” said Aleksandar Nikoloski, Vice Chairman of the Monitoring Committee.

The wiretapping affair has to have a legal resolution, the PACE delegation said and urged SDSM to immediately stop publishing the illegally obtained materials.