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Macedonia President Must Sign Language Law, Speaker Says

The speaker of Macedonia's parliament has told BIRN TV's show that the President will be violating the constitution if he again refuses to sign a new law extending use of the Albanian language.
Talat Xhaferi during the interview at the TV show Jeta ne Kosove | Photo: BIRN

The speaker of Macedonian parliament, Talat Xhaferi, has told BIRN’s TV show Jeta ne Kosove’that if President Gjorge Ivanov again refuses to sign the new language law, after parliament voted for it for a second time, he will breach his constitutional rights.

“If Ivanov decides, as he stated, not to sign for a second time, he will be flagrantly violating the constitution,” Xhaferi told the TV show on Thursday evening.

He would also “make a precedent in the political life of Macedonia”, Xhaferi said, which would allow any Macedonian president in future to veto laws he does not like.

Asked to comment on the conduct of his party colleague Bekir Asani, a senior official from the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, who was recently accused of instructing threats against Naser Selmani, the head of Macedonia’s Journalist’s Association, ZNM, Talat Xhaferi said that he condemns this act.

“Do not expect from me as a parliament speaker to back such behaviour against the journalist,” he said, adding that his condemnation can only be verbal.

“Like any other institution that carries out its work, a journalist should be free to do his job,” Xhaferi said.
But he also criticised Selmani, who at a recent journalist’s protest against the threats called for the Prime Minister “to tie the dogs” in his government coalition, presumably referring to his junior coalition partners from the DUI party.

“Unfortunately, even the journalist enters a level of the public offence. I believe that you have followed the protests in front of the government, [and seen the journalist] addressing the head of government “to tie the dogs” that he has in the coalition. Regardless if he was a party official and caused offence, it does not mean that you as a journalist do the even bigger mistake than the first person and generalise”.

The speaker recalled that Macedonia is a parliamentary and not a presidential democracy, meaning that the head of state has only limited rights.

He noted that the President may veto a law only once, and that if parliament adopts the same act again, he has to sign it.

Macedonia’s parliament adopted the government-backed law for the second time in a tense atmosphere amid opposition attempts to block the vote.

The law extends the official use of Albanian over the entire country, in which ethnic Albanians make up around a quarter of the population of 2.1 million, easing communication in Albanian with institutions like municipalities, hospitals and courts.

The previous law defined Albanian as an official language, but only gave it that status in those areas where Albanians make up over 20 per cent of the local population.

Xhaferi said the law was the last oustanding legal obligation stemming from the 2001 Ohrid Peace Accord, which ended the armed conflict between ethnic Albanian insurgents and Macedonian security forces that year by granting the Albanian community more rights.

According to Xhaferi, the opposition of some ethnic Macedonians to the wider use of Albanian, which is the mother tongue of around a quarter of the population, stems from exaggerated fears among Macedonians about their own identity.

“When for almost seven decades you are told to watch out from your neighbour who is not like you, it is normal that this fear transfers from generation to generation,” Xhaferi said.

Commenting on the physical attempts of former Prime Minister and VMRO DPMNE party leader Nikola Gruevski to disrupt the vote in parliament last week, Xhaferi said that he had been determined not to succumb to provocation.

“I asked the MPs of the [ruling] majority that whatever happens in the parliamentary session, nobody should move from their places, that whatever happens to me, no one should be implicated … Parliament has internal security and I have personal security,” he said.

Minutes before the vote, Gruevski went behind speaker Xhaferi’s desk and tried to meddle with his electronic equipment.

“When we approached each other [with Gruevski], I told him that he should not be in this place,” Xhaferi said.

Xhaferi said it was obvious that Gruevski’s goal was to prevent the vote at any cost. “I had everything pre-estimated, but I did not calculate that Gruevski himself would be the one who will do that,” Xhaferi said.

Read more:

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