The Government of Republic of Macedonia is organizing a public debate tomorrow on the draft amendments to the constitutional changes, which will be held at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. The debate will last five days and will be held throughout the state universities in Macedonia.
After yesterday’s adoption of the draft amendments, apart from the abstained votes of the new VMRO-DPMNE parliamentary group with the expectation for the public debate to reinforce their arguments regarding the constitutional changes, it is expected for the parliamentary body for reconciliation and integration to come out with concrete results.
The meeting is postponed due to the absence of MPs, some of which were summoned to the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime, to testify for the election of Talat Xhaferi as speaker.
Reponsibillity
Accountability and responsibility from the officials who allowed Nikola Gruevski to escape, was requested by 14 non-governmental organizations. They pointed out to the Ministry of Interior, the Intelligence Agency and the Criminal Court, for which urgent and thorough investigations are necessary for their actions.
The organizations demanded for the investigations to be completed urgently, within 10 days, and for responsibility to be determined for the omissions, the eventual failure or complicity. Otherwise political responsibility from the highest officials is requested. Moreover, the civil society associations appealed for Macedonia’s EU perspective not to be undermined, which depends on the rule of law.
Prisons
The Council of Europe today published two reports, of which the first one on the evolution of the situation in the European prisons from 2005 to 2015, and the second one on the evolution of the offenders – foreigners who are in prison or on probation from 2009 to 2015. From their data it turns out that Republic of Macedonia is among the European countries with the highest rate of imprisonments.
The report contains an information sheet as well for each administration in the prisons, accompanied with key data and tables that display the evolution of 17 indicators, along with the relative ranking of each country (low, medium and high level for each indicator) compared to 47 member countries of the Council of Europe, including the 28 EU member countries. The information sheet for Republic of Macedonia can be found on the following address: http://wp.unil.ch/space/files/2018/12/The-FYRO-Macedonia.pdf
EU integrations
Radmila Sekerinska, Minister of Defence of Republic of Macedonia, at today’s conference in Brussels dedicated to the relations between the EU and the Western Balkans, in the session “EU – Western Balkans: still complicated”, stated that Macedonia deserves to start the negotiations for joining EU.
As Sekerinska stated, it is now up to the EU and NATO to fulfil their part of the agreement, and that in June the decision will not be “complicated”, but that it will be a clear signal for Macedonia.
Leadership
When it comes to the pollution, according to the reports of the world measuring institutions, Macedonia yesterday was in the fourth place for most polluted country in the world. In Skopje alone, for instance, the PM10 particles enormously exceeded the permissible limit of concentration.
Bitola, Kumanovo, Tetovo, Kicevo, Gostivar, Kocani and Kavadarci also face serious air pollution. The competent institutions ordered restricted movement outside, using public transportation, proper use of wood stoves…
B. Jordanovska
