SkopjeDiem Macedonia in English
On Friday, VMRO-DPMNE President Hristijan Mickoski urged PM Dimitar Kovacevski and President Stevo Pendarovski to support the process to organise the referendum initiated by his party. As he added, they shouldn’t obstruct it in Parliament through Speaker Talat Xhaferi and should instead allow 150,000 signatures to be collected in order for citizens to be able to freely express their stand. According to Mickoski, VMRO-DPMNE has conducted a lot of polls, in which more than 60% of ethnic Macedonians and over 50% of citizens said they support a referendum and would vote in it. The polls and public opinion of citizens, the opposition leader added, were a sufficient direction for his party, which is why it has decided to take matters a step further, by creating a question that Xhaferi, if he follows the laws and Parliament’s procedures, will not be able to avoid by presenting the explanatory note that Parliament doesn’t have the competence. “That’s the peak of democracy. I wouldn’t see why someone from the international community would be against such expression of a stand,” the opposition leader underlined.
