New Ministers Fail to Quell Unrest in Macedonia

Macedonian MPs on Wednesday backed the appointment of a new Interior Minister, Mitko Cavkov, who was head of the Public Security Bureau, and a new Transportation Minister, Vlado Misajlovski, who headed the state roads enterprise.

The vote was held in the absence of the opposition MPs who have boycotted parliament since the April elections, which they say were conducted fraudulently.

The opposition Social Democrats said the reshuffle would not stop their fight to topple Nikola Gruevski's government, which they accuse of authoritarianism and corruption. Officials from the party say their deputies will not return to parliament because of the reshuffle.

The reshuffle takes place against a backdrop of political crisis revolving around opposition claims that Prime Minister Gruevski and his cousin, the now outgoing secret police chief, Saso Mijalkov, ordered the illegal surveillance of some 20,000 people.

Since February, the opposition has been releasing taped conversations that appear to show that the government has been involved in a wide range of misdeeds and political tricks, including electoral fraud, abuse of the justice system and covering up for the murder of a young man by a police officer.

On Tuesday evening, three key associates of Gruevski's resigned, the Interior Minister, Gordana Jankuloska, the Transportation Minister, Mile Janakieski and the head of the secret police, Mijalkov, who is also the Prime Minister's cousin.

All heavily implicated in the illegal surveillance scandal, they featured in many of the most incriminating tapes released by the opposition.
 
"I hope that my resignation will help resolve the crisis imposed by the opposition with its anti-state behaviour," Mijalkov wrote defiantly in...