Counterspin: Grubi’s statement about the resolution is a cleverly packaged spin
To claim that DUI has nothing against a resolution in the Parliament regarding the negotiations with Bulgaria, because the party has been representing the interests of Albanians, Macedonians and all citizens for 20 years, and at the same time to seek harmonization of the text at a time when the party assessed the resolution as harmful and at a time when SDSM accepts the text as read by the media, is nothing but a spin
Author: Teofil BLazhevski
Artan Grubi, organizational secretary of DUI and first deputy prime minister in the Government of RNM gave a statement regarding the proposal of VMRO-DPMNE for a Resolution in the Parliament on the negotiations with Bulgaria, in which a spin is detected:
Spin: Nothing bothers us, we support it. DUI has been representing the interests of Albanians, Macedonians and all citizens for 20 years and that is why today we are in NATO and one step closer to the EU. We only ask for the text to be harmonized with all parliamentary parties, which is a previous practice in adopting such resolutions and not to be an additional obstacle in the bilateral dispute. We have repeatedly stated that identity, language, culture and history are indisputable and cannot be part of a 21st century dispute.
[Source: Plus Info – Grubi: Nothing bothers us… – date: 07 June 2021]
Counterspin: The informal second man of DUI, the First Deputy Prime Minister, Artan Grubi, made a statement about the fate of the proposed Resolution of VMRO-DPMNE that should be adopted by the Parliament on the negotiations with Bulgaria, and in the statement, a double spin can be observed.
The first spin is the request for the text of the Resolution to be harmonized with all parliamentary parties, and the second is the broader context of Grubi’s statement that DUI has been representing the interests of Albanians, Macedonians and all citizens for 20 years and that is why today we were in NATO and one step closer to the EU.
First of all, it is inconsistent to claim without an explanation that DUI is “bothered by nothing” regarding the resolution and that they “support it”, after they voted against the resolution, which is also assessed as a harmful document twice by the head of diplomacy Bujar Osmani. The first time on 04 June 2021, when he says that it harms the interests of the citizens and on 07 June 2021, when he says that the Resolution can make the biggest mistake (“The biggest mistake we can make so far, from a state position which has credibility in front of the world, to turn it once again into an ethnic one.”).
The spin in Grubi’s statement can be seen not only in some alleged unofficial change of DUI’s course, but remaining in the same or similar position with Osmani on the “text that should be harmonized” (Osmani believes that it should not be imposed by a political party and that the text should be written from scratch), but also because Grubi is fully aware that the other “big parties” have already stated that the text is more or less established.
Namely, the largest party in the ruling coalition, SDSM, has already announced that they are ready to accept the resolution only in the form that has been already declared through the media, which published the text of a possible future parliamentary resolution.
Thus, knowing the position of SDSM and VMRO-DPMNE, and waiting for the precise positions of the other Albanian parties, because the parties of the Macedonians more or less declared themselves, DUI is represented by Grubi as a party that has nothing against the resolution, but that requires re-alignment with the text which is nothing but, de facto, essentially the same attitude as that of Osmani and the party.
Of course, any further debate will lead to potential discussions on ethnic issues or (un)principled conditions and expectations, and the proposer of the Resolution, VMRO DPMNE, is already undermining the consensus positions by the undiplomatic invitation of DUI to vote on the resolution. However, this is not the subject of this counterspin.
The second spin is a decisive general statement at the axiom level that DUI “has been representing the interests of Albanians, Macedonians and all citizens for 20 years and that is why today we are in NATO and one step closer to the EU.”
DUI is a political entity that emerged from the staff of the former ONA leadership, which encouraged, started and participated in the armed conflict in 2001, in the then Republic of Macedonia. After the signing of the Ohrid Framework Agreement, in 2002 DUI appeared on the political scene. Since then, until today, DUI is a party that is constantly in power. The closest to losing power were in 2016 when the number of opposition MPs in the Albanian electorate began to grow, but even then DUI, to a lesser extent, were a larger parliamentary group.
For all these 19 years, it is a fact, through all the general political directions of action in the Government and the Parliament, that DUI was basically concerned with the realization of the rights of the Albanians enshrined in the Ohrid Framework Agreement and translated into the amendments to the Constitution from 2002, rather than with anything else, that is, with any other interests. In fact, the membership of the party and the electorate are, above all, Albanians in RNM.
How they did it and whether they successfully represented the interests of the Albanians in the country is another question, for which the basic legal solutions in the implementation of equitable representation in the institutions or the use of the language can be analyzed. There is no need to enter into assessments of the way the policies were implemented in the management of local self-governments where DUI was or is in power, and where the majority of citizens and Albanians and Macedonians and others are dissatisfied with such policies, thus expressing desire for change of government, as, for example, in Gostivar, and in other major local governments DUI retains power only with the help of coalitions with other major parties in the Macedonian bloc.
Therefore, the statement that “DUI has been representing the interests of Albanians, Macedonians and all citizens for 20 years and that is why today we are in NATO and one step closer to the EU”, is nothing but a naked (immodest) political phrase, which also contains a spin.
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This article has been produced within the project Fact-Checking the Progress of North Macedonia towards the EU, implemented by the Metamorphosis Foundation. The article, originally published by Truthmeter, is made possible by the support of the American non-profit foundation NED (National Endowment for Democracy). The content of this article is the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Metamorphosis, NED or their partners.
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