Belgrade - Several hundred opposition activists spent the night in a makeshift camp in front of the government’s headquarters in the Macedonian capital, threatening to remain there until Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski resigns, TV Telma reported on Monday.
The camp in central Skopje was assembled during a nationwide protest against the conservative leader that culminated Sunday with a rally that drew more than 20 000 people.
Social Democratic (SDSM) leader Zoran Zaev has accused Gruevski and his VMRO party of illegally wiretapping tens of thousands of people to cement his grip on power. The SDMS has boycotted parliament since 2014 elections, claiming that the VMRO rigged them.
“We’re protesting bad government policies, most of all, the planned poor education system reforms,” economics student Ruza, 19, said, adding that students “back the opposition demand for cabinet resignation and new, fair polls.”
“All this can be resolved only once this government leaves,” she said.
“Let’s hope someone better will replace them.”
The unified opposition, joined by non-governmental organisations as well as high school and university students, vowed to continue the protests until Gruevski resigns and makes way for a government of technocrats that would prepare fair elections.
Gruevski, in power since 2006, dismissed the allegations and counter-accused Zaev of collaborating with an unnamed foreign intelligence service and taking bribes.
The political crisis has exacerbated Macedonia’s economic problems and possibly reignited ethnic tensions between the Albanian minority, who compose 25-30 per cent of the country’s 2.1 million inhabitants and brought it to the verge of a civil war with a 2001 insurgency.
An armed clash earlier this month between alleged Albanian terrorists and Macedonian police left eight police and 14 suspected terrorists dead in Kumanovo, 40 kilometres north of Skopje.
Thirty people face terrorism-related charges for the incident, but some critics have accused Gruevski of staging it before it got out of control.
Greece, which claims the name Macedonia for its northern province, blocked the tiny former Yugoslav republic’s membership in NATO in 2008. The same issue is set to hamper Macedonia’s aspiration to join the European Union once it makes the necessary reforms.
DPA