Debar, 5 April 2022 (MIA) – Kicking off his election campaign in Debar on Thursday evening, Arben Taravari, presidential candidate of the Vredi (Worth) coalition, said that it is time for SDSM and DUI to go into retirement after May 9 and to become the opposition.

He said that throughout his campaign he won’t be mentioning DUI, but he will only present his platform. “Here in Debar, I decided to talk about the Constitution, one of the four pillars of my platform. The Constitution of Macedonia, adopted in 1991, had never been voted and supported by the Albanians. The leader Arben Xhaferi used to say that the Constitution was the generator of the political crises in Macedonia. This was the reality until the 2001 conflict when the Constitution had been amended, however the Ohrid Agreement had never been fully implemented. To this day, the main pillar of the Ohrid Agreement hasn’t been fulfilled, which is fiscal decentralization. Our obligation is to change the Constitution, which is the precondition for Macedonia to continue on the European path,” Taravari told his supporters. 

Once it is decided the Bulgarians to be included in the Constitution, Taravari said that the Vredi coalition to the new government will put forward the condition for erasing 20 percent of the use of the Albanian language.

On the election of a head of the state in Parliament, he said that Macedonia is a parliamentary democracy where the obligations of the president are the same as the presidents of Kosovo, Albania, Greece and Germany where the president is elected by the parliament. 

“Our demand is the president to be elected with 2/3 majority and, of course, with the Badinter principle,” he stated. 

Speaking at the rally, Taravari revealed the three main words of his campaign, “unity, changes and worth.”

Izet Mexhiti, the leader of the Democratic Movement, Afrim Gashi of Alternativa and Bekim Qoku of the Kosovo-based party “Self-Determination” also addressed Taravari’s supporters in Debar. 

Photo: MIA