The session of the Skopje City Council, with councillors' questions on the agenda, ended in whistles and empty chairs. Councillors from the Levica party spent around six minutes whistling and banging at mayor Orce Gjorgjievski, then walked out of the chamber.

Gjorgjievski answered from the podium while they were still in the room. "You'll take care of this choir - the 'wind and fog' choir," he told council president Dame Dimitrovski. He then reminded the councillors of their allowances of over 40,000 denars: "The whistling is over, now they'll go off and rest. Bravo, excellent, let the people pay."

The fight is about the format

The whistles are only the symptom. The cause is the new way questions are asked: all councillors speak first, and the mayor then answers them one by one, in a single uninterrupted run. Levica says this strips the councillor's question of its point - a councillor can't react on the spot when an answer is incomplete, inaccurate or dodges the subject. The council president, for his part, said when the model was introduced that the aim was to make the council work better.

The second complaint is more serious. According to Levica, the video recording of the session is missing the part where councillors ask their questions and demand a return to the old model - only the part where Gjorgjievski takes the podium is available. The party called it a "political one-man show".

"The Skopje City Council has 45 elected members who represent the citizens, and they are not a hand-picked audience at the mayor's performance," Levica said.

Whistling is not the most sophisticated form of opposition work, and the mayor is entitled to say so. But if the recording really starts with his answer and not with the questions, then the citizens who pay for both the councillors and the mayor get to see only half a session. Who decided what stays on the tape - and why exactly that way?