Nikola Gruevski

Macedonian leaders are contemplating holding new elections for seats vacated by the opposition in parliament.

Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski who is holding talks on forming a new government, on Tuesday said that after the opposition MPs resigned, parliament "has no choice but to verify those resignations at the next session and call fresh elections for the vacant seats".

In an interview for state run MIA news Agency, Nikola Gruevski for the first time has denied involvement in a bank sale that the opposition revealed in late April.

“I have never taken a million-and-a-half euros in cash, nor have I in any other way  taken any other sum for the sale of Makedonska Banka. All the other accusations that come out of this are also untrue,” Gruevski said.

The coalition has launched a campaign called ‘Census Now’, saying that Macedonia must not be held hostage by political elites that interrupted the last census because of the sensitive issue of how many ethnic Macedonians and Albanians live in the country.

The opposition led by the Social Democratic Party, SDSM, whose MPs submitted written resignations to parliament last week after alleging fraud at April's elections, is seriously considering setting up a ‘shadow government’, a high-ranking party source told Balkan Insight on Monday.

Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski is suing the head of the Social Democrats, SDSM, Zoran Zaev, for slander, demanding  half-a-million euro in compensation, Zaev's lawyer, Miroslav Vujic, said.

The first court hearing is scheduled for June 19.

The 33 MPs from the opposition Social Democratic Party, SDSM, the Liberal Democrats, LDP, and the New Social Democrats, NSDP, have submitted formal resignations to the speaker of parliament.

They dispute the legitimacy of the April general and presidential elections and attribute the victory of Nikola Gruevski's VMRO DPMNE party to fraud.

Macedonia's opposition Social Democrats, SDSM, have submitted a forensic analysis conducted in Serbia that they say proves that Gruevski's own voice can be heard on a telephone recording in which a man was discussing the sale of the bank.

The prosecution in Macedonia says it is still deciding whether to take this new alleged evidence into account, however.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told Macedonian leaders in Skopje that the key condition for joining the alliance was solving the long-standing dispute with Greece over its name.

He was meeting Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and other leaders in Skopje on a regional tour aimed at underlining support for Balkan countries.

In the presence of Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, the Belgian company officially opened its new factory near the capital, Skopje, in its first big investment abroad.

The plant is in fact already operational, employing some 450 workers, and produced over 100 buses for the US market this year.

The inaugural session in parliament on Monday was held in a half-empty hall, with almost the entire opposition and the junior ruling Albanian party, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, refusing to attend.