Albanians issued an ultimatum to the Macedonian Slavic parties
The leader of North Macedonia's largest Albanian party, the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), Ali Ahmeti, has threatened the country's largest Slavic parties with a political crisis if the country is not led by an ethnic Albanian.
Akhmeti reported this to the Plusinfo portal, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Previously, the DUI leader promised to nominate a single Albanian candidate for the Prime Minister of North Macedonia, but has not yet done so. However, the country's Albanian media are already naming a likely nominee for this post - fellow party member Ahmeti Ljazim Destani.
Ali Ahmeti
“If Zaev (leader of the pro-Western Social Democratic Union of Macedonia - SDSM, who seized power as a result of the recent Maidan) or Mickoski (leader of the largest opposition national conservative party VMRO-DPMNE - Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization - Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity - ed.) If the proposal is rejected and the DUI receives a majority of votes among the Albanian parties, the government will not be formed. This will be followed by a political crisis and new elections,” Ahmeti threatened.
Ahmeti (far left) with his comrades
Previously DUI leader claimed that “the time has come to choose an Albanian prime minister” for North Macedonia. The piquancy of the situation lies in the fact that it is the head of government, and not the president, according to the state structure of the country, who has the greatest power in it.
Ali Ahmeti's statements have already caused a negative resonance in Macedonian society. In particular, conservatives from VMRO-DPMNE, who initially opposed the renaming of the country to please Greece and NATO, state status for the Albanian language and who took moderate pro-Serbian and pro-Russian positions, perceived these words sharply negatively.
Ahmeti’s recent ally, with whom they launched the Maidan in the country, SDSM leader Zoran Zaev, who himself is not against becoming prime minister again, treated them in a similar way. He regarded the DUI leader's statements as an ultimatum, saying that by doing so he closed the door for himself to create a coalition with his party.
Ahmeti was also criticized by the head of the Alliance for Albanians, Ziadin Sela, but not because he is against the Albanian premiership, but because Ahmeti is for him a competitor for Albanian votes and a corrupt official who does not have sufficient radicalism.
The Albanian diaspora in North Macedonia, according to 2002 data, makes up 25,2% of the country's population, while after the Macedonian Maidan, the Albanian language became the second official language of this state, and municipalities with a predominant Albanian population received rights that no national minority has.
Independent experts attribute this situation to the fact that the United States behind the political processes in the Balkans is betting on the Albanians as their non-Slavic allies in the matter of subjugating the peninsula, whose predominantly Slavic population has traditionally had sympathy for Russia.
Ali Ahmeti himself was associated with the Kosovo Liberation Army in the 90s; in 2001 he became a political representative of the so-called National Liberation Army (Ushtria Çlirimtare Kombëtare), which used terrorist methods to achieve the separation of the Albanian enclaves from Macedonia.
Militants of the National Liberation Army in 2001
After Washington and NATO brought the parties to the conflict to the negotiating table and forced them to sign the Ohrid Agreement, Ahmeti created the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), which over time began to split into other Albanian parties.
Parliamentary elections in North Macedonia are due to take place on July 15 this year.
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