SKOPJE, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- After several hours of intensive meetings on Sunday night here to sign a coalition agreement between the VMRO-DPMNE party and the party of ethnic Albanians DUI, VMRO-DPMNE leader Nikola Gruevski announced that no coalition had been concluded.
As head of the party who won the majority of parliamentary seats in the Dec. 11 elections, Gruevski was mandated by President Gjorge Ivanov on Jan. 9 to create a new government of Macedonia and was given 20 days to achieve this.
A few hours before the deadline expired, officials from the two parties said VMRO-DPMNE and DUI had already agreed on the governing coalition but at midnight, the representatives declared the opposite, saying it was impossible to reach an agreement.
Gruevskis's party won the elections by a narrow margin -- 51 seats against the 49 seats won by main opposition party SDSM led by Zoran Zaev.
However, in order to form the new government, one party needs to have at least 61 seats in the 120-seat parliament.
After receiving the mandate from the president, VMRO-DPMNE started talks with the party of DUI led by Ali Ahmeti, which won 10 seats.
A few days ago, Ahmeti's party, as well as the other ethnic Albanian parties, signed a joint platform in which they decided to stay together. They presented seven requests to the ruling party of Gruevski in which the most important one was the use of the Albanian language as a second official language in Macedonia.
The parties didn't agree on all points of the platform which was set as a condition for the creation of a governing coalition.
Soon after declaring the failure of talks, the representatives of VMRO-DPMNE said in a press release that Macedonia should hold new parliamentary elections as it was the only way to get out of the political crisis.
Even representatives from DUI said the two parties had failed to agree on several issues which made the creation of a coalition impossible.
Now, based on the country's constitution, the president should give the mandate to form the government to the second party who won most of votes, in this case,the SDSM.
