By Xinhua
Tirana : Macedonia’s Parliament Speaker Ljubisa Georgijevski said on Saturday the country’s parliamentary election would be held on June 1, news reaching here from Skopje reported.
“I set the date of the elections for June 1 this year and the date has been chosen in accordance with the electoral laws and the constitution,” Georgievski told reporters.
Macedonia’s lawmakers voted on Friday night to dissolve parliament and hold early elections after the country’s NATO bid was rejected at the alliance’s last week summit in Romanian capital of Bucharest.
Seventy members in the country’s 120-seat assembly voted in favor of the call of a main ethnic Albanian opposition party in Macedonia to dissolve parliament and hold early elections.
The Democratic Union of Integration (DUI) submitted the proposal after Greece blocked Macedonia’s NATO membership at last week NATO summit in Romania.
Athens opposes its neighbor’s constitutional name of “The Republic of Macedonia”, arguing it implies a territorial claim over a Greek northern province also called Macedonia.
Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said opposition parties had been blocking his plans for reform. He wanted to secure a stronger mandate for his conservative VMRO-DPMNE party with early elections.