2024-04-11 05:06:26
The first thing that Biljana Vankovska from the “Levitsa” party would do, if she were elected president of North Macedonia, would be to terminate the treaty with Bulgaria, after which she would start a debate on a completely new Constitution. This is what Vankovska says in an interview for the state news agency of North Macedonia MIA.
According to Vankovska, from a legal point of view, the bilateral agreement with Bulgaria is the easiest to terminate without a problem, because “it does not even interfere with the French proposal”.
“At the same time, the European Union is changing in a bad direction – with the social protests, with its policy towards Ukraine and militarization, so it shot itself in the foot that it is no longer the EU that was promised to us. So we must turn to our own national interests and raise our national dignity. After all, the slogan of my campaign is “To restore the dignity of the people”. They trampled us and we are already starting to not believe in ourselves that we can change something”, says Vankovska.
According to Vankovska, the Ohrid Framework Agreement, which ended the conflict in the country in 2001, has done its job, and if the country wants to move forward, it should start a debate instead of seeing it as a “taboo topic and something not must be discussed”.
“Vankovska is for normal democracy. The framework treaty fulfilled its function at a dramatic time, it was imposed from the outside as a supposed peace agreement, partially incorporated into the Constitution. For twenty years, the Framework Treaty has shown itself to be a constitutionally based ethnic segregation that has reached the point of absurdity. There is no longer a single institution that can be created without the presence of the ethnic factor. In civil states, in true democracies, where the demos, the citizen, rules, this is not a natural thing. My point of view is that the Framework Agreement has fulfilled its historical function, and if we want to continue, we must either stand up and be a normal state, or we are facing a binational federal or federalized state,” says Vankowska.
“I think that the president can open a constitutional debate and a procedure to change the entire Constitution instead of fixing, gluing, adding Bulgarians or I don’t know who. We need an entirely new Constitution. That’s why I’m having such a radical debate. Of course, the president cannot adopt a new constitution, if I could, I would tell you – the constitution I want is this. But there’s society, there’s debate, there’s experts, there’s interest groups, and I think even if it doesn’t work out, there’s still some chance. One day we have to get rid of the fear of talking about the Framework Agreement, for 2001,” says Vankovska.
She states that she will try to “lead an interesting and meaningful debate” and warns that her assessment is that the five-year presidential term “will involve a dramatic change in the world”, writes BTA.