SKOPJE – Leaders of the parliamentary parties in North Macedonia met yesterday to discuss several reform steps, among them the abolition of the pre-election caretaker government, a mechanism introduced in the country in 2016. While there was an agreement that this mechanism should be abolished, the exact timeframe is still to be determined, said Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski.
The meeting was convened by Mickoski, leader of the VMRO-DPMNE party, and attended by the representatives of DUI, VLEN, Levica and ZNAM parties. The largest opposition party, SDSM, refused to attend.
Following the meeting, Mickoski said that, generally, the participants agreed that the caretaker government should be a thing of the past.
“You saw that one coalition was absent today. If that coalition does not accept this amendment to the Law on Government, which would erase the caretaker government for the next parliamentary elections, my proposal was that we should not do it by force, without their consent, but rather adopt amendments to the Law, so that the caretaker government would not be valid after the next elections”, Micskoski said, Telma reports.
The caretaker government was introduced as a mechanism for building confidence in elections during the 2015-2016 political crisis in North Macedonia. It was applied for the 2016, 2020 and 2024 parliamentary elections.
The mechanism implies that 100 days prior to the elections, the current government resigns and the parliament appoints a new cabinet in which opposition parties can nominate several ministers in charge of areas relevant to the conduct of elections.
Other topics discussed during the meeting were related to the election of the new Ombudsman and changes to the Electoral Code.
The opposition SDSM released a statement claiming that the government is preparing for early elections “without basic conditions to be fair and democratic”.
“Everybody who went to the meeting with Mickoski today is complicit in legitimising the crime and corruption of the ‘tender’ (public call) coalition of VMRO-ZNAM, anti-EU campaign of the government to isolate the country, the plan for early elections that they have already agreed upon without basic conditions to be fair and democratic and the implementation of the “migrants for money” plan after that”, stated SDSM.
“Only when society is ready to follow EU standards, the technical government can be abolished”, stated Venko Filipče, leader of the SDSM.
