With 102 votes in favor of 105 present, the Parliament voted today to dismiss Katica Janeva as Special Prosecutor.
The disgraced prosecutor was appointed in 2015, with huge promises that she will restore justice and the rule of law in Macedonia. She quickly subverted her office to the orders coming from the SDSM party, paving the way for Zoran Zaev to become Prime Minister by launching criminal charges against dozens of top VMRO-DPMNE officials and activists. Until a fewm months ago Zaev pushed her to remain Special Prosecutor, with a permanent mandate, but the revelations that she was abusing her office not only to shape political outcomes but also to extort millions from businessmen she was also prosecuting caused the biggest legal scandal in recent Macedonian history.
Every madness, every experiment, ends like this. When a country doesn’t uphold its Constitution, when the Parliament adopts unconstitutional laws, when the institutions of the state fail to act in light of the violations of the Constitution… this is how it all ends up, said VMRO-DPMNE member of Parliament Ilija Dimovski.
Dimovski said that at least 10 members of Parliament from his party were blackmailed by Janeva, on top of the many other party officials, a claim also repeated by the opposition leader Hristijan Mickoski.
Dimovski condemned the plan which Zaev’s regime and Janeva are using to try and continue their campaign of persecution of the opposition – to have Janeva, who is detained and should have been stripped of all authority weeks ago, order that her office is de facto abolished and all their case files given to another group of prosecutors loyal to Zaev.
We still have legal madness going on, when orders which are not stamped and carry different signatures are accepted as valid. Any additional legal experiment will only harm our country even more. You may think it’s all fun and games now, but it won’t be fun when it ends, Dimoski warned the ruling majority in Parliament, which protracted the vote to dismiss Janeva until she sent the controversial orders from prison.
SDSM coordinator in Parliament Jovan Mitreski said that SDSM supported the vote because “everybody who broke the law must be held responsible”, including Katica Janeva. SDSM, none the less, insists that Janeva’s investigations into the opposition are legitimate and should be continued through the OJO/PPO office of prosecutors. SDSM also blamed VMRO that they want to damage Macedonia’s EU accession talks with their criticism of Janeva’s political persecution. The EU, which is supposed to decide on whether Macedonia opens accession talks in October, initially insisted Janeva’s office is made permanent. But, after the scandal, the EU asked for a new, similar institution to be agreed between the opposition and the Government. These talks failed as SDSM opted to give Janeva’s files to the also poorly regarded OJO institution.
Janeva lost the support from the ethnic Albanian parties as well. Fadil Zendeli from the BESA party said that “the goal of the SPO was not met, and now the two major parties have buried it, and along with it, any hope for a judiciary that won’t work for the privileged few”.
The decision of the Parliament will be sent to the Council of public prosecutors for confirmation. Janeva’s mandate was going to expire tomorrow anyway.
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