May 29 (SeeNews) - The leader of the Socialist Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), Zoran Zaev, announced late on Sunday the names of the ministers in his planned coalition government which will also include two ethnic-Albanian parties.
Parliament will vote on the proposed cabinet on Tuesday, it said on its website. To be approved, the new government needs to be backed by 61 of all 120 MPs. SDSM controls 49 seats in the country's assembly, the ethnic-Albanian Democratic Union of Integration (DUI) holds 10 seats, and the Alliance for Albanians has three seats.
In the proposed cabinet of fifteen ministers, SDSM will have ten representatives, including the ministers of finance, interior, foreign affairs, and defence, Zaev said late on Sunday.
He proposed that the finance ministry be headed by Dragan Tevdovski, university professor in mathematics and statistics at the Skopje university and chairman of SDSM's economic committee.
A day earlier, DUI announced its candidates for deputy prime minister in charge of relations between communities and deputy prime minister in charge of the EU affairs, as well as the names of the ministers of economy, ecology and justice, and one minister without portfolio. Kreshnik Bekteshi, DUI's nominee for minister of economy, is currently head of the Swiss office of Macedonia's agency for foreign investments.
The other coalition partner, Alliance for Albanians, has come up with nominations for minister of health care and local self-government, state-owned news agency MIA reported.
Zaev was given a mandate to form a government after the conservative VMRO-DPMNE party, which won a slight lead in December snap election, failed to reach an agreement with its previous coalition partner DUI.