VMRO DPMNE party

The ruling VMRO DPMNE party has orchestrated massive electoral fraud during the past elections, using fictive voters, fake ID cards, pressure on individuals and firms and misuse of police and administration, the opposition Social Democrats claimed on Friday.

Gruevski, who insists that he has nothing with alleged wiretapping of more than 20,000 people, said that a press release issued by his VMRO DPMNE party had been misunderstood and was not calling for violence against government opponents.

The authorities offered concessions over the weekend ahead of the opposition's threatened publication on Monday of allegedly compromising information about the government that it said was gathered by the country's secret services.

The opposition Social Democrats, SDSM, have condemned the publication of a video, which purports to show the opposition leader admitting that he obtained incriminating material from foreign intelligence agencies.

The fact that the "Prime Minister is recording political meetings in his cabinet is scandalous", the SDSM said on Tuesday.

Macedonia is introducing a new coat of arms, a rampant red lion on a yellow shield topped with a crown, replacing the current symbols forged in the Communist era.

Planned changes to the system of maternity leave payments, promoted last week by the State Health Insurance Fund, FZOM, called "Speedy Payment of Maternity Leave", will encourage discrimination against women at the workplace, rights activists say.

Prime Minister Gruevski on Saturday dismissed reports that his governing VMRO DPMNE party was considering early elections as a way of resolving the opposition boycott of parliament.

 "We are not thinking about early elections. We are thinking about elections in 2018," he said, referring to their due date.

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The ruling VMRO DPMNE party is mulling fresh general elections this November, the coordinator of the party's legislators, Ilija Dimovski, told the media.

"Time will tell whether elections will be held only for the vacant 31 seats of the opposition, or for all the 123 seats in parliament," Dimovski said on Monday.

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Despite the absence of opposition legislators, a plenary session of the Macedonian parliament is expected to approve a package of seven government-proposed changes to the constitution on Wednesday or Thursday.  

One of the proposed changes, which has drawn criticism from human rights activists, will define marriage more narrowly as a union strictly between one man and one woman.

The Democratic Party of Albanians, DPA, said it will file amendments to the proposed constitutional changes in a bid to ensure greater use of the Albanian language and national symbols in the country.

The DPA said it would make its case at the start of the parliamentary session on government’s constitutional changes on Tuesday.