Former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who received asylum in Hungary to avoid politically driven persecution, details the abuses and violations in the judiciary over the past several years under the Zaev regime. According to Gruevski, in his term, there may have happened violations of the law regulating the appointment of judges, but now we have total disregard of the laws and the merit system put in place to prevent political abuse of the judiciary.

Gruevski’s comments, published on Facebook, were provoked by an article in the pro-Zaev news site SDK.mk, which described last week’s drama over the failed appointment of new Appeals Court judges in Skopje, which turned into a open lobbying and horse-trading between the ruling SDSM and DUI parties. The news site described the scandalous political intervention in the judiciary, but prefaced the article with an introduction that declared how the same practice was widespread under Gruevski as well.

– We may have had our faults, but it was never like this, Gruevski writes, before describing in detail the 2010 judicial reform package which introduced criteria for the appointment of judges and prosecutors. “I was focued on economic reforms in the first few years of my term, and it was possible that then, before these laws were adopted, lobbying went on and the criticism of the appointments of judges done in my term mostly date back to these years. The reform package was tectonic, we had 70 experts working on it, and it was approved by the European Union. It declared that only candidates who have completed the two year Academy, and underwent rigorous testing, tests of integrity, a psychological test, English language testing etc, could become judges and prosecutors. And even then, they could only begin at the first rung, as Basic Court judges, and advance to the Appeals or Supreme court through hard work over a period of years. Distinguished lawyers objected to this, believing that their experience entitled them to join the Supreme Court outright, but this was done in order to guarantee to all judges that, through work and patient resisting of political pressures, they have a clear track to advance forward”, Gruevski explains.

The former Prime Minister and VMRO leader compares this situation with the legally identical, but practically very different situation since Zaev’s power grab in 2017.

Since the end of May 2017, in practically all cases the objective criteria were disregarded. According to the law, there was no need to postpone the meeting on the Appeals Court judges – all candidates should be ranked by the objective criteria and whoever comes on top should be promoted. But then Zaev would not be able to promote judges who are prepared to do his bidding. We have cases that not just the first or the first few, but the first 10 best ranked candidates are ignored in favor of number 11 or number 30 on the ranking who get promoted to the Appeals Court. We could turn to the prosecutors and ask them to investigate this blatant disregard of the still valid law on the judiciary but there is no point. They can’t do it. The investigation would take them directly to the top of the Government, Gruevski writes.

Gruevski adds that a similar disregard of the rules regulating objective criteria in hiring and promotion is seen in the public administration sector. A similarly prepared law, that regulated the administration, is ignored and candidates are promoted on subjective grounds.