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Southeast Europe
April 13, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 16
“Today’s protest is not an end but the beginning of fight for Nis’s airport... They will try to take the airport but we have to be ready to get out to the streets every moment,” a protestor, Rastislav Dinic, said, N1 reported.
The protest was initiated by an individual, Milos Boskovic, whose main message to the rally was that only citizens of Nis can decide the airport’s destiny — not central government officials or even the president of the country.
While the council vote was postponed, protesters “voted” by hanging up pieces of blue paper with
the word “against” written on them, N1 reported.
“They decided to not to vote when saw that their party’s dictate is not in accordance with decisions of the citizens of Nis,” Boskovic said, holding up a blue paper.
The issue has also become an emotive one on the other side of the debate. The Nis assembly told N1 it had canceled its session that day "because of the large amount of misinformation which has been told to the public by individuals and various interest groups, the credibility of the town of Nis has been destroyed”.
Macedonian government survives no-confidence vote
Valentina Dimitrievska in Skopje
The Macedonian parliament voted down the no-confidence motion filed by the opposition VMRO-DPMNE party against the government after a day-long debate on April 11. The motion was rejected by 62 MPs, while 40 voted in favour and two abstained.
The vote was seen as a test for the reform agenda of the government, which came to power in May 2017, and is expected to start debating reform laws as soon as April 12. Prime Minister Zoran Zaev is planning a government reshuffle and the possible expansion of the ruling majority in the parliament to include more parties.
The motion was filed 10 months after Zaev’s So- cial Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) and its coalition partner the ethnic Albanian Demo- cratic Union for Integration (DUI) came to power. The rejection of the motion was expected even though the SDSM and DUI, supported by another
small ethnic Albanian party, have only a slim ma- jority of 62 MPs in the 120-seat parliament.
When filing the motion, VMRO-DPMNE accused the government of increasing crime and corruption, and causing economic stagnation.
Zaev defended the work of the government in
his address to MPs, saying that his cabinet is oriented to reforms and to restoring the situation in the country following the “devastating” 10-year governance of VMRO-DPMNE. The SDSM came to power at the end of May 2017.
Zaev underlined that the government’s priority is for Macedonia to gain EU and Nato membership. He also noted that 2018 will be a year of judicial reforms.
Speaking about his economic plans, Zaev said that the government expects the country to achieve