BESA party sources said that he will not vote for the proposed law on state prosecutors, which was unilaterally presented by Prime Minister Zoran Zaev on Friday, after he failed to find common ground with the opposition VMRO-DPMNE party and amid the major corruption scandal involving the Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO).

Zaev proposed to have the SPO rolled into the regular OJO office of state prosecutors, but with the task of going after high level crimes and corruption, and nominated his loyalist Vilma Ruskoska to replace the disgraced Katica Janeva.

This new proposal will bury the SPO. For us it is unacceptable that there will be no new cases based on the wiretaps the SPO holds. If this is not changed, we will not vote for the proposal, officials from BESA told the Nezavisen daily. Zaev’s draft law provides that the wiretaps which are not currently being used in cases brought forward by Katica Janeva will be destroyed, meaning that evidence about crimes possibly perpetrated by his SDSM party, or his Albanian coalition partner DUI, would be gone.

This would put Zaev further away from his goal to get to the 81 votes he needs to adopt the law on his own, without the support of VMRO-DPMNE. Zaev may try to rely on the votes of the nine VMRO-DPMNE members of Parliament who he pressured to vote in favor of the name “North Macedonia”, largely using criminal charges brought against them by Ruskoska and Janeva. But even if they fall in line again, defections from the Albanian opposition would ruin his plans. BESA’s main request is that early elections are called, and the party insists that the SDSM – DUI coalition has failed to restore justice.

DUI also said it will not support Zaev’s request that he names Ruskoska as the new Special Prosecutor.

BESA reminded Zaev that their agreement which prompted them to vote for the “new name” was not implemented in full and that Zaev has additional concessions to grant to the Albanian national cause in Macedonia. The party insisted that this will also be a condition for them to support his proposal on the state prosecutors law.