Reeker paying a visit to North Macedonia

“History is a school, and not a prison. You made an enormous step forward towards a place in NATO and the EU, while the transatlantic community remains a foundation of the US foreign policy”, stated today the future US Assistant Secretary of State Philip Reeker during his visit to Skopje.

Reeker highlighted the support for the country, but also for the region that continues to face great challenges, in a world full of turbulences. Today in Skopje he is to meet with Head of diplomacy Nikola Dimitrov, Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, as well as with Deputy Prime Ministers for economic and European issues, Koco Angjusev and Bujar Osmani.

Veljanoski returned to work

MP Trajko Veljanoski, whose immunity “survived” last week, today returned to work, after the Parliament did not succeed to pass the revoking of his MP immunity within the legal deadline. Veljanoski is suspected as one of the five organizers of the “Bloody Thursday” event. Today he sat in his parliamentary seat and voted “for” the draft amendments to the VAT law.

Supreme Court released the businessmen from the “Empire” case

The Supreme Court accepted the appeals and businessmen Jordan Kamcev, Cvetan Pandeleski and Nenad Josifovik, suspected in the SPO investigation “Empire”, are released from house arrest. This information is unofficial and is expected to be confirmed during the day.

According to the legal opinion determined by the supreme judges at a general session, the SPO is an unauthorized plaintiff and cannot raise charges, open investigations and take over cases of the regular prosecutor’s office 18 months after the bombs were taken over.

The reports of the European Commission will be delayed

The European Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement, Johannes Hahn, today stated that the progress reports for the Western Balkan countries will not be published next month due to the European elections.

“In this regard we are trying to remove all the obstacles that could make the objective, neutral debate more difficult, and also for it not to be affected by the EU elections. We are thinking for the debate to be a little later than usual, in order to allow a debate on the different outcomes from the enlargement, a debate based on facts”, stated Hahn.

Presidential elections 2019

The State Election Commission, the State Commission for Prevention of Corruption and the State Audit Office signed a Memorandum for cooperation during the presidential elections. With this memorandum, they have committed to jointly fight against election irregularities.

In reply to questions from journalists, Oliver Derkoski from the SEC and Biljana Ivanovska from the SCPC, after the signing of the Memorandum of cooperation between these two institutions and the State Audit Office, said that until now there have been no indications of pre-election campaigning. Derkoski stated that the lists have still not been completed officially in order to start with the campaigning.

“There are no confirmed lists of candidates, that is why there is no early start of the campaign. They should be confirmed until March 21, to submit their candidates until then. Once they are confirmed, we can talk about an early start of the election campaign”, said Derkoski.

So far, only president candidate Gordana Siljanovska Davkova has collected signatures for support, a total of 16.000 signatures of citizens.

There is no place for God in the decision for termination of pregnancy

Today’s public debate on the amendments to the Law on termination of pregnancy went by in Parliament in a heated atmosphere. Religious leaders who tried to attend the debate were not allowed because they had not been invited, whereas civil society organization opposed the adoption of the law.

The new legal changes anticipate that until week 12, the abortion is performed at the request and consent of the woman, from gestation week 12 to 22 at the request of the woman, upon medical indications the woman is not referred to a committee. The doctor may request advice from another colleague. After week 22, a request is submitted to a first instance committee composed of 2 gynecologists and one social worker, and then has the right to appeal.

A fight, not celebrating in a tavern!

“A fight, not a tavern” is the topic of the panel discussion that is organized by CIVIL – Center for Freedom on Thursday (March 7) at 12.00 noon at Menada.

Despite the progress of society and development of awareness among people, many women face serious and real problems that are much bigger than in which tavern they are going to celebrate Women’s Day, or how much money will be given for the teacher’s present. At the discussion, our guests will be talking about women’s rights, the need of a fight and not celebration of the Day of women’s rights, about the abuses, discrimination…

How to fight for women’s rights when we do not understand the essence of March 8, is the question to which our interlocutors will try to give an answer.

М. Ivanovska