Skopje, 16 March 2023 (MIA) – Mickoski’s announced snap elections issue from December, which were then rescheduled for January, then mid-February is now closed, elections will be held in the regular term, said Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski.

Mickoski claimed that he has the necessary parliamentary majority of 61 MPs, and it was proven that the Government has an increased majority with the reshuffle of 65 MPs, which closes the issue of snap elections.

“As I’ve been saying from day one, the elections will be held in their regular term because my position, unlike someone else’s, has not changed. First, we will hold presidential elections in which the candidate proposed by the SDSM coalition will win, and then parliamentary elections in which this coalition will form a pro-European government in Macedonia,” Kovachevski said in response to a journalist’s question at a press conference held on Thursday at the Government.

He said that the opposition should spend more time working on municipal work instead of demanding snap elections.

Regarding the opposition’s demand for an Albanian PM 100 days before the elections, he said it was nothing new and that it was published in 2020 at the press conference after the elections attended by Zoran Zaev and DUI leader Ali Ahmeti, where the coalition government was formed.

“It will happen during the 2024 elections again, when SDSM wins and forms another pro-European government led by a SDSM candidate. SDSM respects coalition agreements, unlike VMRO-DPMNE. The caretaker PM will be elected in the last 100 days of the mandate of the current Government and we are sure that the citizens will support us once again,” Kovachevski said.

He pointed out that the caretaker PM only has a mandate to conduct the elections during the pre-election period.

“I have no issue with having an Albanian caretaker MP or a member of any other ethnic community that lives in the country, but ethnicity doesn’t correlate to profession. Any professional can read the government, especially in technical mandate conditions when the only obligation is conducting elections. I believe that a NATO member state in the midst of EU negotiations and one which chairs the OSCE should not have a caretaker government before the elections,” Kovachevski said.

He added that he wouldn’t comment on DUI’s internal campaigns because they have their own internal political campaign going on and creative slogans that are a part of the political campaign that’s unrelated to the Government processes as a whole. dk/nn/

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