May 19 (SeeNews) - Macedonia's parliament approved the resignation of two ministers and three deputy ministers from opposition socialist SDSM at an extraordinary session late on Wednesday.
The cabinet members from the largest opposition party submitted their resignations on April 6, simultaneously with the parliament dissolution and the scheduling of early elections for June 5, which were cancelled on Wednesday. Back then, SDSM announced it would boycott the polls, claiming the conditions for fair and free elections, agreed in Przino, had not been met.
Interior minister Oliver Spasovski and labour minister Frosina Remenski were replaced by deputies from VMRO-DPMNE, previously holding these positions - Mitko Chavkov and Dime Spasov, respectively.
The parliament will hold another session today, at which it may come out with a position on the controversial move by Macedonia's president Gjorge Ivanov in mid-April to halt investigations against 56 officials suspected of being involved in а wiretapping scandal. The move triggered continuing mass street protests and both local and international calls that the pardons should be rescinded immediately.
Macedonia's ruling VMRO DPMNE was the only party that had registered candidates for the June 5 vote with the elections committee. The two main ethnic Albanian parties - Democratic Union of Integration (DUI) and the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA) - later joined SDSM in the boycott of the elections.
The extraordinary session of the parliament was called after the country's Constitutional Court suspended election-related activities until it decides whether the parliament's dissolution was lawful. The court's move was welcomed by international observers, including the EU and the U.S., who believe that the conditions for elections were not met. On Tuesday, the European Commission warned that the international community could not accept as a reliable partner any government resulting from elections in which three out of four major parties are not participating.
The snap vote was part of a EU-brokered deal, known as the Przino agreement, aimed to solve a prolonged political crisis in the country, which started January 2015 when SDSM leader Zoran Zaev accused the coalition government of the conservative VMRO-DPMNE and DUI of corruption, wiretapping illegally more than 20,000 people and covering-up a murder. For its part, the government charged Zaev with trying to destabilise the country.