Ruling majority yet to Reach deal on Referendum campaign

The government is collecting money, while Parliament will seek a way how to spend it. No deal has been struck among coalition partners from the ruling majority on the way in which the propaganda for the name referendum will be financed. “This week, most likely on Wednesday, a coordinative meeting will be hosted by the PS,” SDSM MP Tomislav Tuntev said on Monday. He expects the meeting to see the further steps related to the referendum to be identified, agreed and defined. LDP leader Goran Milevski, too, confirmed that there was no deal within the frameworks of the ruling coalition. According to BESA, it will support the referendum, even though it considers that the government’s propaganda will become a party campaign. The party is of the opinion that the one-sided financing of participants in the propaganda could be disputable. The movement for boycotting the referendum, which consists of, among others, Voice for Macedonia’s Solza Grceva, Single Macedonia’s Janko Bacev and VMRO-DPMNE Democratic Fraction’s Filip Petrovski, requested the government to provide funds for them to promote the positions to boycott the referendum. The amount, as they explained, should be identical to the one that Parliament will receive. The same day, Defence Minister Radmila Sekerinska said the funds the Ministry would provide, around one million euros, would come from the money intended for promotion of NATO membership. No other ministry revealed its plans regarding funds for the referendum. Regarding VMRO-DPMNE, the decision on the referendum will be made by the party’s organs. “The party will coordinate today with the parliamentary group in order to define a stand whether it will support Parliament getting involved in the propaganda for the referendum with taxpayers’ money,” sources told Sitel TV.