Skopje, 7 July 2022 (MIA) — I strongly condemn yesterday's events, which fortunately did not have fatal outcomes, Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski said in a Facebook post Thursday. He also wrote that no rage could justify the use of firearms by civilians, throwing stones, damaging public property and endangering people’s lives. According to PM Kovachevski, expressing dissatisfaction through peaceful protests is a constitutionally guaranteed right and his government has repeatedly shown that democracy is in the hands of the citizens. “But hatred and violence have never been the solution and never will be the solution for anything,” he wrote, adding that the recent displays of hooliganism on the streets were damaging to the Republic of North Macedonia. Kovachevski called on politicians not to incite citizens to violence by giving them false promises. “These scenarios are familiar to all of us. Yesterday we saw a terrible example of politicians with an irresistible tendency to play the role of victim, due to a great desire for power. Such ‘games’ show the true face of those who hide behind the people. One day they radicalize them, the very next day they withdraw and distance themselves from the citizens whom they had previously manipulated,” he wrote. “I’d like to tell them this: The bloody images in Parliament and on the streets across the country are a thing of the past. Those times are behind us and I will never allow them to come back,” he added. Present state priorities, he noted, were harmony and prosperity. “In the Republic of North Macedonia, institutions work, so every problem and question is solved through dialogue. That's how a NATO member country works, that's how a country whose future is the EU works, that's how North Macedonia works. “At no time as a Government have we questioned the Macedonian identity and the Macedonian language. It is our duty to preserve the nation’s dignity and this is what we are doing. We are a European government and we stand for European values,” he wrote. mr/