Skopje, 29 May 2024 (MIA) - SDSM MP and outgoing Minister of Culture, Bisera Kostadinovska-Stojchevska, announced Wednesday that she has filed a complaint to the Inspection Sector at the Ministry of Culture against the new Speaker of Parliament, Afrim Gashi, noting that he should have taken his oath of office in Macedonian first, and then Albanian.

“The Law on the Use of the Macedonian Language is a result of our commitments and policies for the affirmation and proper use of the Macedonian language. We can’t and mustn’t remain silent over the scandalous swearing-in of the Speaker of the Macedonian Parliament. That’s why I have already filed a complaint to the Inspection Sector at the Ministry of Culture and I will make use of all mechanisms currently available for the protection and manner of use of the Macedonian language. I expected the current President of the country, [Gordana] Siljanovska-Davkova, with whom we finalized the text of the Law on the Use of the Macedonian language when she was an MP, to react to this behavior and firmly condemn the act of not taking an oath of office in the first official language of the country,” Kostadinovska-Stojchevska told Sloboden Pechat.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Kostadinovska-Stojchevska said the new Speaker violated the multiethnic spirit of the country, as well as the spirit of the Constitution and the Law on the Use of the Macedonian Language.

“The same was done by the chair of the constitutive session of Parliament, MP Merita Kolçi-Koxhaxhiku. VMRO-DPMNE and ZNAM due to narrow coalition and partisan interests lacked the capacity, the reason and the impulse to oppose this anti-Macedonian act. Why is it scandalous for the oath of office to be taken first in Albanian and then in Macedonian? Because the Macedonian language is the first official language of North Macedonia, followed by the other, not less important languages, determined by the Constitution in line with the percentages of the population who speaks them. The language isn’t and can’t be a personal or an ethnic mechanism for political points. Language is a means for official and other types of communication. The Speaker of Parliament can be an ethnic Albanian, and an ethnic Macedonian or any other MP that the ruling parties agree on, but the first official language of North Macedonia is the Macedonian language,” Kostadinovska-Stocjhevska wrote.

The SDSM MP also underscored that the country’s sole official language for international use is the Macedonian language, noting that she is certain that Tuesday’s constitutive session also had a strong international resonance. 

Photo: MIA Archive