Maceconia Prosecution at Risk if Ruling Party Wins Polls

Legal and political experts in Macedonia warn that if the Special Prosecution, SJO, is forced to stop raising new indictments in June 2017, as the original deadline predicts, Macedonia's longstanding crisis  will go back to square one.

Without the prospect for justice being done for many alleged wrongdoings, they say the crisis will only worsen.

"The SJO must not be scrapped. On the contrary, its deadline should be prolonged and it should work more intensely," former Macedonian MP Ismet Ramadani said.

The main ruling VMRO DPMNE party insists that if it wins the December 11 elections, it will not prolong the June deadline for the Special Prosecution to raise indictments.
 
"Prolonging the SJO's deadline would mean prolongation of the political crisis," VMRO DPMNE leader Nikola Gruevski told an election rally in Probistip this weekend, repeating his old accusation that the SJO's work has been unprofessional and biased.

A former head of Macedonia's Constitutional Court, Trendafil Ivanovski, disputed this logic, recalling that the SJO was formed to restore justice and the rule of law in a country with hopelessly dysfunctional regular institutions.

"I am an optimist that the SJO, no matter who wins the elections, must get the country out of the crisis. After all ... with democracy restored, this institution will surely take on a different character. By then the regular prosecution, which has not done its job according to the law, should also resume its functionality," Ivanovski told 21 TV.

Despite Ivanovski's optimism, the election result will likely determine whether the allegations relating to the wiretapped recordings, on which Macedonia's crisis revolves, are ever fully investigated, and the speed at which...