Discussing the Special Prosecutor’s Office, whose mandate is one of the issues that some EU member states want resolved before allowing the opening of accession talks, VMRO-DPMNE President Hristijan Mickoski said that this is a partisan institution used to persecute political opponents.

VMRO made a series of proposals to the ruling SDSM party on how to reform Katica Janeva’s office, before it could be made permanent, but the two parties have not reached agreement for months.

We don’t need a law on state prosecutors which SDSM will use to harass its opponents in the opposition. All that SDSM negotiator, Justice Minister Renata Deskoska, wants, is that the SPO cases started unlawfully, after July 2017, and which the Supreme Court found to be outside the bounds of the law, to be included in this new law and to carry on, Mickoski said.

The Special Prosecutor’s Office, staffed by SDSM affiliated prosecutors, initiated charges almost exclusively against VMRO-DPMNE officials and was instrumental in SDSM’s power grab. Even after its mandate expired on June 30th 2017, it continued filing new cases, most notably one against VMRO-DPMNE as a party, which threatens to completely shut down Macedonia’s largest party.

This is not a judicial reform, this is not fighting crime, this is a partisan tool used against the political opponents of the Government and it’s pushing Macedonia back in time, Mickoski added during an interview with Klan TV.