Macedonian, and its Cyrillic script, remains the official language of the country, Macedonian Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said Thursday during a parliamentary questions session in response to the European Front coalition’s MP Skender Rexhepi regarding language use and equitable ethnic representation.
At Thursday’s session dedicated to MP questions, Rexhepi asked the PM to explain, as he put it, “why the Government, in a time of economic and political crisis, raises ethnic topics every day”. He also asked for clarification on whether government ministers need translators, considering that, according to him, “MPs are not obliged to know the Macedonian language if they know Albanian”.
PM Mickoski stressed in his response that the Law on Equitable Representation will be before MPs soon, after, as he said, it has gone through all institutional procedures and the opinion of the Venice Commission.
“The law is constitutional, not unconstitutional, as your coalition has been lying to Macedonians for 20 years,” Mickoski said.
Regarding the issue of knowing the Macedonian language, the Prime Minister reiterated that the Constitution defines the Macedonian language as official nationwide, while Albanian and other languages are used in line with the provisions on local self-government.
“I have nothing against Albanian, or Turkish, Serbian, English, or any language in the world. But if you read the Constitution, according to it, the official language is the Macedonian language and its Cyrillic script. We have an amendment in the section on local self-government units,” the Prime Minister said.
Mickoski also referred to the latest public case with a reporter’s question addressed to Education Minister Vesna Janevska, assessing the reporter’s behavior as “indecent.”
“No one is against you using the Albanian language, you can speak whatever language you want, but it should be known that the official language in this country is Macedonian and its Cyrillic script, and for international use,” the PM underlined.
