Article originally published in Hungarian on Magyar Hírlap.
By Mariann Őry.
The left might have deliberately provoked the fights in the parliament.
Macedonia, Skopje – High tensions in Macedonia as the Social-Democrats chose irregularly the Albanian chairman of the parliament.
The Social-Democrats want to use this assault on the parliament as a political tool, while they aim to form a government as long as they have their foreign support.
There was a chaotic situation in the Macedonian parliament after right-wing demonstrators broke into the building on Thursday night, outraged by the fact that the Social Democratic SDSM and the Albanian minority parties chose Talat Xhaferi, a representative of the Albanian Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), as a chairman of the parliament, during a break of the session.
A crackdown broke out and the crowd shoved several journalists, but also Zoran Zaev, SDSM president, and Zijadin Sela leading the Alliance of Albanians has been severely injured. After the police subsequently removed the intruders, fifty thousands protesters spent the night in front of the building. On Friday, Agim Nuhiu, the interior minister, submitted his resignation for some of the police officers stand on the side of the demonstrators instead of protecting people inside the parliament. President Gjorge Ivanov called on the leaders of the parliamentary parties to find a solution because, in his television talk, he said, “we should not wait for the solution from abroad”.
SDSM has been refusing dialogue with demonstrators for weeks who are demanding that they reject the Tirana Platform, created by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and practically got by blackmailing from the Albanian minority parties, which would strengthen the rights of the Albanian minority which the Macedonian majority can not accept. The Tirana Platform has been accepted after the elections. They have foretold that they will storm the parliament if the next government will be shaped conforming to the Tirana Platform.
Cvetin Chilimanov, a Macedonian journalist working for the MIA news agency told the Magyar Hírlap that Social-Democrats deliberately provoked the events when the demonstrators were the most numerous. The SDSM immediately “capitalized” on the event and soon arrived from the EU High Commissioner for External Relations (EEAS), the Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn, and from the US Embassy, co-operating with the Social Democrats and their ally, the NGOs supported by George Soros, the recognition of Xhaferi’s irregular election.
Chilimanov recalled that the Albanian politicians have been elected by a minimal majority in a chaotic situation in which it was impossible to count the votes. He believes the SDSM has had to take the now-and-never decision in order to form the government until the new US administration is not fully in charge of the Department of State. He added the visit of George Soros to Hahn in Brussels on this very same day had a great resonance in thje Macedonian media, considering Soros’ active intervention in Macedonia.
According to Chilimanov, early elections would be the solution, but SDSM is opposed to it, since because of the Tirana platform the VMRO-DPMNE center-right, which ruled until now, would win. He noted that SDSM could possibily manage a government for a few months.
Translated from Hungarian by the Visegrád Post.
