NGO Parliament

Parliament with open doors

The non-governmental organizations' coalition, NGO Parliament, has launched the idea for opening the state institutions' doors for the citizens and their organizations, so that they can take more active part in the decision-making processes and contribute to the development of democratic governing structures.
The coalition consists of eighty civic organizations from all over Macedonia.

-The idea for establishing such body in our organization is not new - says Vlado Dimovski from the Centre for interethnic tolerance and refugees from Skopje. On 7 July this year, organized by the Initiative Board, the first International Thematic Parliament Conference took place, dedicated to the realization of this idea. Representatives from the many civic organizations from Macedonia took part at the Conference, as well as parliament representatives, representatives from the foreign embassies and institutions in the country and experts in that field. We have analysed the experiences of the cooperation between civic organizations and the Parliament in our country so far and that cooperation in the neighbouring countries and further. There is a similar thing in Romania, but it is on local level. There are also similar structures in Croatia, Slovenia, Poland and Bulgaria, and civic organization participating in the UN Parliament work, as well as in the European Council, having the right to discuss, but not to vote. In our opinion, the establishment of such a body in Macedonia would mean creating a real opposition to the government, and not to a certain party. It would assume the active role of a corrector. Therefore, our members must not have any active political history - added Dimovski.

The NGO Parliamentary Elections will be announced in September and will take place in November this year throughout the country, The future NGO Parliament will operate without a central office, it will meet six times a year, it will have 13 ministries (for finance, project activities, justice, euro integrations, external and internal affairs, culture, education, science, tourism, environment, local government, interethnic and religious relations, social work and psycho-social activities, strengthening the capacities and civic associations' personnel issues), and the citizens will be able to refer to any local civic association which is member of the Parliament. For more information, go to www.mango.org.mk.

 

D.M.