The leaders of the political parties from the coalition “For Better Macedonia” led by ruling VMRO-DPMNE signed Friday a political platform defining the principles of their joint actions in the four years after the early parliamentary elections.

The platform represents a follow-up to VMRO-DPMNE’s program “Rebirth in a Hundred Steps, Expanded and Updated” with which they undertake to foster the Euro-Atlantic integration and the economic development, continue the reforms, modernize the country and carry on the crackdown on corruption and organized crime.

Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said that this was the largest coalition ever and that it would win the elections. He added that the victory of this coalition would stand for continuation of the commenced reforms in all fields.

The coalition is made up of 24 parties that are going to run in the coming elections with joint candidates. In the previous parliamentary elections, the coalition “For Better Macedonia” consisted of 18 parties led by VMRO-DPMNE.

Governing VMRO-DPMNE and opposition VMRO-NP and United for Macedonia waited Thursday almost to the last minute to report their lists of candidates for MPs in the early parliamentary elections to the State Election Commission (DIK). VMRO-DPMNE president Nikola Gruevski will head the list in the first constituency (Skopje). Interior Minister Gordana Jankulovska is going to head the list in the second constituency, followed by Parliament Speaker Trajko Veljanoski, Jordan Pacov, Ivan Stoiljkovic, Amdi Bajram and Vladanka Avirovik. Valtko Gjorcev will be heading the list in the third constituency, followed by Ljubisav Ivanov Dzingo, Nadica Tulieva, Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Pesevski and MP Ilija Najdoski. Zoran Stavreski will top the list in the fourth constituency, followed by Prilep mayor Marjan Risteski, Silvana Boneva and Pavle Trajanov from the Democratic Union. Minister Milososki, Bitola mayor Vlado Talevski, Liljana Zaturovska from Struga, Aleksandar Nikolovski and Ilija Kitanovski will be running in the fifth constituency, and Minister Nikola Todorov, Kenan Hasipi and Svetlana Karapetrova from Tetovo will be running in the sixth constituency.

 

Macedonia and Brazil are going to promote bilateral relations. Foreign Ministers Milososki and Patriota considered the possibility for intensifying cooperation in a number of areas, such as economy, culture, education and tourism.

SDSM held a Congress Monday at which it was announced that leader Branko Crvenkovski and former PM Vlado Buckovski will not run for MPs. The voter’s lists of SDSM will be headed by Radmila Sekerinska, Ana Pavlovska- Daneva, Stevco Jakimovski, Zoran Zaev, Jani Makraduli and Stojko Paunovski. The Congress adopted the election program that will also be governmental and should contribute to recover the economy, freedom and the democracy of citizens.

Macedonia’s constitutional name remained on the website of the United Nations in the post about Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki’s visit only for a few hours, Nova Makedonija reports.

Antonio Milososki, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, was announced on Thursday morning as Minister of the Republic of Macedonia but the post was changed by Thursday afternoon and so the final announcement stated that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was to meet the minister of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

The previous announcement with the country’s constitutional name was a pleasant surprise considering that Macedonia joined the United Nation in 1993 under the provisional reference.

The Macedonian candidacy for membership of the Human Rights Council in 2013-2016, the dialogue between Skopje and Athens about the name issue conducted under UN auspices and the international dimension of the lawsuit that Macedonia launched before the International Court of Justice in the Hague because of the breach of the Interim Accord by the southern neighbor are the topics that Minister Milososki was scheduled to table at the meeting with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon later Thursday.

Before Foreign Minister Milososki’s meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in New York Thursday, on the official website of the UN, the Macedonian foreign minister has been referred to as minister of foreign affairs of the Republic of Macedonia even though the UN in its official communication with Macedonia uses the provisional reference of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Minister Milososki is going to present the Macedonian candidacy for membership of the Human Rights Council for 2013-2016 and will also inform Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the Macedonian-Greek political dialogue and the process before the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

The Government approved 315 million denars, or some 5 million euros, for the implementation of the early parliamentary elections. The Government said that in keeping with the decision for dissolving Parliament and calling early elections to be held on 5 June 2011, a decision has been taken for approving 315 million denars from this year’s budget.

“The money will be used for carrying out of the activities of the early parliamentary elections,” the Government said.

The State Election Commission (DIK) had previously requested of the Ministry of Finance 6.6 million euros, or 1.6 million euros more from the amount of the previous parliamentary elections. Some 1.1 million euros have been planned for the first ever vote of the diaspora. This money includes costs for daily allowances of the 10 members of the committees at the 50 embassies and consulates, costs for their stay, transport, visas and other activities. DIK’s account will be controlled by two authorized signatories and not just one as has so far been the case. Both the president and the vice president of DIK will have access to the election account.

- Macedonian Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki on Friday in New York will meet with UN Secretary General Bank Ki-moon and the option for him to meet UN mediator Matthew Nimetz is not excluded. At the moment, Milososki is on a working visit to Japan.

Germany is going to argue that Macedonia should open EU membership negotiations. The government in Berlin plans to put the Macedonia-Greece name issue on the agenda for debate at the Bundestag. Germany is going to try to help resolve the name issue or make sure it does not affect Macedonia’s accession to NATO and the opening of talks with the Union.

This conclusion is inferred from the document sent by the Federal Foreign Office of Germany to MP Stefan Liebich. The letter signed by Cornelia Pieper, the Minister of State at the Foreign Office, says: “In 2009 and 2010 the European Commission recommended opening of membership negotiations with Macedonia. The German government supports Macedonia’s accession but the negotiations have not yet gone underway because of the objection of Greece, which has clearly stated that it would not allow for the recommendation to be put into practice before the name issue is resolved. Minister Pieper stresses at the end of the document that the government in keeping with its powers is going to suggest that the Bundestag should debate the issue of opening membership negotiations with Macedonia.

- Macedonian Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki is to pay an official visit to Japan 26-28 April. In the framework of his visit, Milososki will meet with his counterpart Takeaki Matsumoto.

 

The relations between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Macedonia are not at all marred by open political issues, said Wednesday Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov after meeting with his Macedonian counterpart Antonio Milososki in Ohrid. According to Milososki, the division between east and west are part of history and today the countries are more interested in progress at a global level. According to Lavrov it is an old logic that today certain European politicians are forcing certain countries to choose “Russia or Europe”.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is paying Wednesday an official visit to Macedonia. The Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Macedonia and Russia are expected to sign a plan on consultations. According to the information of the Macedonian MFA, a cooperation agreement between Macedonia and Russia will be signed during the visit of a high-ranking Macedonian delegation to Moscow by the end of this year. Russian Minister Lavrov is expected to bring copies of archive documents of the end 19th and early 20th century that have great historical and national significance for the country.

Former president of SDSM, Radmila Sekerinska, will be the prime minister candidate of SDSM in the coming elections, SDSM presidency decided Tuesday.

 

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store met Tuesday with his Macedonian counterpart Antonio Milososki and stressed that Norway supports Macedonia's Euro-Atlantic integration and expects to see Macedonia enter NATO soon.

The removal of the term “Macedonian” from the last report of the European Parliament is a result of the aggressive Greek diplomacy and the steps it took especially after the NATO Summit in Bucharest, Macedonian Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki said. He also added that the Greeks were trying to remove the internationally recognized code MKD and “Macedonian” from all other rulebooks, instructions and other documents. However, he is confident that the time when things could be deleted is gone, Vecer reports.

“Today Macedonia and its people are part of the European family of cultures and there is no politician, a government or a country that can negate them. Some may only like it or not, but the Macedonian language and people are part of the European mosaic of languages and cultures. Therefore I trust the effort of the Greek statesmen is Sisyphean and eventually is not going to pay off,” Minister Milososki said.

The support from certain Bulgarian MEPs for the Greek amendments and stances are not organized politics, according to Minister Milososki, but isolated cases. In his view, most countries of the European Union and a great many MEPs have a sincere and honest wish for Macedonia to take its deserved place in the European family as soon as possible.

- The Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Sergey Lavrov, is arriving in Ohrid Wednesday. He insisted to meet the Macedonian leadership in Ohrid because he wished to see the cradle of the Cyrillic literacy.

VMRO-DPMNE and BDI are going to win fewer parliamentary seats in the coming early elections from the previous poll yet their win will be convincing and they will be able to form a majority government without the participation of other smaller parties. The decision to include other political factors in the governing team is going to depend on the result of the smaller parties where no major surprises are expected.

This is the conclusion that can be inferred from Dnevnik’s last opinion poll conducted by the agency Rating. Asked what political party they would vote for if elections were held tomorrow, 24.3 percent of the interviewees said VMRO-DPMNE, 16 percent SDSM, 8.1 percent BDI, 3.9 percent PDSH, 3.4 percent Demokracia e Re, 2.3 percent United for Macedonia, 2.2 percent Rufi Osmani’s party, 2.1 percent  LDP and 1.4 percent VMRO-NP.

Translated into numbers of parliamentary seats, in the new Parliament VMRO-DPMNE would have 51 seats as opposed to the previous 63, SDSM 32, BDI 14, PDSH 7, Rufi Osmani 3, Democracia e Re 4, United for Macedonia 3, LDP 2, and other parties 4. Seventy-two percent of the citizens said they would go to the polls and 33.2 percent are undecided.

The first-ever Congressional Caucus on Macedonia and Macedonian Americans to oppose the powerful Greek lobby in the US Congress has been recently formed by Republican Congresswoman Candice C. Miller of Michigan, a proven friend to Macedonia. The group consists of both Republicans and Democrats, Dnevnik reports.

The names of the members of this bipartisan Caucus have not yet been revealed. According to Dnevnik, the Caucus will have more than 10 members and their names will be made public in about two weeks once the procedure of registration is over.

“Macedonia is a true friend to the United States.  The people of Macedonia have made many contributions to the world by serving as a leader in promoting democracy, freedom and liberty.  Macedonia is truly one of the emerging democracies in the world and it is in our best interest to maintain a strong alliance with this great nation,” Congresswoman Miller said.

The President of the United Macedonian Diaspora (UMD), Meto Koloski, said that the formation of the Macedonia Caucus was a testament of how far the Macedonian-American community has come in the last century.

- According to the terms set by the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Macedonia is going to provide Thursday its commentary to the Greek response to the additional question set to the Greek representatives. Judge Mohamed Bennouna asked Greece whether in the period before and during the NATO summit in Bucharest, Athens expressed its position regarding the accession of FYROM in the contacts with the other NATO member states.

It takes vision and leadership to shift the status quo situation in Macedonia and help open membership negotiations considering that through our case positive changes can be expected for the entire region, said Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov in Budapest Tuesday. He assessed his visit to Hungary as very successful, Dnevnik reports.

The talks with EC President Jose Manuel Barroso in Ohrid and the President and Prime Minister of Hungary, Pal Schmitt and Viktor Orban, according to Ivanov, inspire hope that Macedonia’s situation as regards the EU positions would change.

“Hungary, which currently holds the chairmanship of the EU, is going to raise the issue of setting Macedonia a date for commencing membership negotiations at all meetings at which enlargement will be discussed. This was stressed by the Hungarian officials and we have also been promised that the issue will also be raised at the coming meeting of the European Council,” President Ivanov said.

The Parliament, without the presence of the opposition, chose Boris Kondorko from SDSM as the president of the State Election Commission (DIK). Vlatko Gjorcev from VMRO-DPMNE stated that he hopes that Kondarko will have sense for the democratic process and act independently. According to Ermira Mehmeti from BDI, it is regretful that the DIK president was elected without the votes of the opposition. SDSM, LDP and DR say that the entire responsibility for fair and democratic elections falls on the Government. In an interview with A1 TV, Kondarko stated that he is not worried about the criticisms that he was a party member because this is according to law and that his duty is to work according to the Election Law.  

Parliament is going to dissolve on Thursday (14 April) and the early parliamentary elections will be called for 5 June on Friday (15 April), said Parliament Speaker Trajko Veljanoski following the coordination meeting Monday with the vice presidents of the Parliament and the coordinators of the parliamentary groups, Kapital reports. MPs collected signatures Monday and Tuesday regarding the dissolution decision.

“After my decision on the dissolution of Parliament was provided to the coordinators of the parliamentary groups, we agreed upon the concrete steps leading to parliamentary dissolution and calling of elections,” Speaker Veljanoski said.

The steps include adoption of the public administration reform laws, and the modifications to the election law and the law on MPs. The Parliament is voting Tuesday on the laws being passed with a two-thirds majority and is going to elect the President of the State Election Commission as well as the extradition-related constitutional amendments.

 

Establishing an accession dialogue at a high level that will be held twice a year in order to speed up the implementation of the required reforms was proposed in Ohrid on Saturday by the President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, who reiterated together with Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule that there should not be any dilemmas concerning Macedonia’s accession to the EU.  

“As a sign of the continuous support from the EC, the Prime Minister and I agreed upon two concrete steps: establishing an accession dialogue at a high level, which would be held twice a year in order to speed up the implementation of the required reforms, and an economic political conference that would analyze the strategic challenges. It is important for your country to stay the reform course. It is absolutely important for Skopje to be an active part of this dynamics. The country has to retain the reform process,” Barroso said and added that, “unless this happens, there is a rising risk for the country to lag behind in the accession process.”

Parliament Speaker Trajko Veljanoski will schedule the session for the Parliament’s dissolution on Thursday, 14 April.
Veljanoski announced after Monday’s coordination meeting that the decision for scheduling early parliamentary elections would be signed on April 15.

Not issuing fiscal receipts, corruption, tax evasion or unprofessional conduct of public administration employees will also be reported online through the website of the Public Revenue Office (UJP), said Information Society and Administration Minister Ivo Ivanovski.

With this project, Minister Ivanovski stressed, the degree of sophistication of the electronic services as a standard by which the EU evaluates all member states every year will be raised. It is also part of the standards set by the Macedonian government for information society development.

 

The European Parliament, with 506 votes in favor, 44 against and 44 abstentions, adopted the Resolution on Macedonia’s progress, which is based on the European Commission’s 2010 report. The Resolution calls on the European Council to set a date for start of the accession negotiations with Macedonia. At the same time, Macedonia and Greece are encouraged to find a solution to the name issue, which would satisfy both sides.   

Instead of being reduced, in keeping with the OSCE recommendations, the voters’ list expanded by 40,000 new voters from January to end March this year. At the moment, the voters’ list, which has been provided to the State Election Commission Tuesday, has a total of 1,830,000 voters and only a month and a half ago, when the results of its revision were announced, the authorities said that in end 2010 Macedonia had 1,792,6000 voters, Nova Makedonija said.

“I don’t know exactly how many voters there are at the moment. Over 1.8 million,” said Subhi Jakupi, vice president of the State Election Commission (DIK) who is in charge of this authority until its president is elected. Jakupi promoted Tuesday the electronic voters’ list.

The services working on the e-list confirmed that at the moment there were over 1,830,000 voters.

Subhi Jakupi, a representative of ruling BDI and deputy president of the State Election Commission (DIK), is most probably going to take the role of organizing and carrying out the early general elections unless the Parliament elects the president of DIK by the end of this week, Nova Makedonija reports.  

The governing coalition of VMRO-DPMNE and BDI is said to be thinking whether to elect Boris Kondarko as president of DIK by the time the elections are called or run in the elections without a president of the commission, Nova Makedonija has learned from parliamentary sources.

“Although the MPs of these two parties have the required two-thirds majority of more than 80 MPs, the government does not want to risk being criticized for electing the president of DIK, who should be from the ranks of the opposition, without the opposition. On the other hand, if it does not elect Kondarko and organizes elections with incomplete composition of DIK, it risks the regularity of the elections,” sources say.

An election fever gripped the political parties over the weekend. The situation in both the party central committees and their branches is boiling. The election committees are being manned, election lists are being compiled, candidates are scrambling for higher positions on the lists, etc. The Parliament passed the election rules, without consensus for the first time  - only with the votes of the government. Sixty-eight MPs of governing VMRO-DPMNE and BDI voted for the modifications to the election law. LDP MP Roza Topuzova-Karevska and PDSH MP Imer Aliu participated in the debate but did not take part in the vote.

Under the modified election law, the diaspora will be able to vote too and the new Parliament is going to have 123 MPs including three diaspora MPs representing Europe, the USA and Australia.

The Parliament should also correct the number of voters in the sixth election unit, elect the new president of the State Election Commission, Boris Kondarko from SDSM, and adopt the constitutional amendments for extradition of Macedonian citizens with double citizenship whereupon it can dissolve. The largest opposition party is going to participate in the elections but is not going to discontinue its parliamentary boycott. Imer Selmani’s Demokracia e Re, on the other hand, is going to return to Parliament only to vote for its dissolution. Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said last week that his party would suggest that the elections be held on 5 June. The elections should officially be called by Parliament Speaker Trajko Veljanoski.

- The International Court of Justice in the Hague asked Greece what its position was at the NATO Summit in Bucharest regarding Macedonia’s membership. This is the epilogue of the oral hearing in Macedonia’s lawsuit against Greece for violation of the Interim Accord of 1995 by blocking Macedonia’s membership of NATO under the provisional reference of FYROM. Greece will have to provide the answer by 7 April.