Politicians Fail to Unblock Judiciary Reform in Macedonia

19 10 2007 Skopje_ Macedonian party leaders on Friday, failed once again to agree a draft law on public prosecutors, leaving judiciary reforms, vital for the country’s NATO and EU accession, deadlocked.

The prime minister and leader of the ruling centre-right VMRO-DPMNE party, Nikola Gruevski, along with his Albanian coalition partner, DPA president Menduh Thaci, failed to hammer out an agreement on the bill with the leader of the opposition Social Democrats Radmila Sekerinska, and Ali Ahmeti, the head of the main Albanian opposition party, DUI.

“Today, again, an agreement on the public prosecution service has not been reached”, Prime Minister Gruevski told media after the meeting.

Opposition SDSM leader Sekerinska, said that agreement was, “practically impossible to reach”, and suspected that the meeting was, “just an alibi for Gruevski” to try to discuss concessions that he had allegedly agreed in secret with the Albanian opposition in the country.

The Social Democrats previously claimed that VMRO-DPMNE and the DUI reached a secret deal in May on various concessions for the Albanian minority that would go beyond the framework of the Ohrid accords that ended a six-month inter-ethnic conflict in 2001.

The last in a series of meetings dedicated to reform of the judiciary took place on September 20.

The contentious issue then, as now, related to the criteria for appointing public prosecutors.

The opposition is accusing the government of trying to impose its supporters as prosecutors.

The Social Democrats propose that the re-election of some 200 prosecutors who have reached the end of their terms in office should be done by the prosecutors’ council under the existing criteria, which should secure their independence and protect them from government influence.

The government says that adopting this solution would mean the prosecutors would stay in office permanently.

It proposes their re-election through tighter procedures.

The country has little time left to meet the requirements of the reform agenda, as it awaits an invitation to join NATO, which it hopes will be issued at the Alliance’s summit in Bucharest in April 2008.

Meanwhile, in November the European Commission is due to publish its progress report on Macedonia that will have a strong influence on the setting of a date for starting Skopje’s negotiations for joining the EU.

The lack of cooperation between President Branko Crvenkovski and the government, as well as the numerous disagreements between parties over crucial reforms that culminated in violent incidents in the parliament last month, has put a brake on the county’s much needed political reforms.

During the Macedonian president’s visit to Brussels in October, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, accused Macedonian politicians of “political immaturity”, and repeated earlier EU and NATO calls for an improvement in the political dialogue and the acceleration of political reforms.

By contrast, both EU and NATO officials have praised Macedonia’s economic reforms in 2007. (BIRN)