May 23, 2007

Albanians in Macedonia: Join Government


The Party for Democratic Prosperity, representing Albanians in Macedonia, has announced that it will join the Macedonian government next week.

The Party for Democratic Prosperity, representing Albanians in Macedonia, has announced that it will join the Macedonian government next week.

Below is an article published by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network:

Skopje - Albanian opposition Party for Democratic Prosperity, PDP will officially join the Macedonian government next week, the party spokesman Adrianit Hoxha told Balkan Insight on Tuesday (22 May 2007).

Hoxha said that according to the agreement reached last week between PDP president, Abduljadi Vejseli and prime minister and leader of VMRO - DPMNE party, Nikola Gruevski, PDP will get the post of minister for local government and will appoint a state secretary in the ministry of interior as well as some other lower ranking posts.

"We have formed an internal commission which will decide which candidates PDP is going to propose for local government minister and other posts. We will decide in two days and we expect that they can start to work next week", Hoxha says.

After four months of boycotting parliament, the leader of the party, Vejseli, returned to Macedonian parliament on Monday (21 May 2007).

"I decided to return because I didn't want to compromise Macedonia's NATO and EU integration by rejecting the political dialogue", Vejseli told the media.

Although PDP has three seats in parliament, Vejseli returned alone, as the other two deputies decided to continue with the boycott of parliament together with the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI.
Vejseli accused DUI for manipulating his party colleagues and jeopardising Macedonia`s EU integration.

"DUI does not have a vision for the future. It is not a good strategy to continue the boycott of the institutions. It only creates a bad image of Macedonia," Vejseli said.

During the last parliamentary elections in July 2006, PDP was in coalition with DUI, the main Albanian opposition party. Although The DUI/PDP coalition won majority of ethnic Albanian votes the ruling VMRO-DPMNE decided to take the rival Democratic Party of Albanians, DPA as a government partner.

In January Albanian parties DUI and PDP decided to boycott parliament, after various attempts to exert pressure on the government to fulfill their demands failed to yield results. Ongoing political dialogue between the party of the former rebels and the ruling party VMRO - DPMNE has not yet resulted in return of DUI to the parliament.

NATO and EU representatives have continuously repeated that the dialogue between Government and opposition, and returning of DUI and PDP in the parliament, is crucial for the country`s Euro-Atlantic ambitions.