Dutch expert on the Balkans Hans van den Berg writes that the new line-up of the SDSM party is not what you would expect in a Government that fights corruption. In several tweets, Van den Berg focuses on the appointment of former Skopje Mayor Petre Silegov to the Executive Board of SDSM, and likely to the next Government as Transportation Minister, as well that of former Karpos Mayor Stefan Bogoev.
Bogoev and Shilegov get a seat in the ‘new’ SDSM leadership. Especially the latter is the opposite of what should be new, ‘clean, credible and competent’ government. This will not impress MK citizens, a main goal of PM-designate Kovacevski. Shilegov is rumoured as new Transport Minister, a post associated (in MK as well as wider WB region) with corruption/cronyism/crime. After terrible incidents, in MK and BG, in which many MK citizens perished, no transparency/accountability. How could this possibly improve now?, Van den Berg writes in his tweets.
During his term in office, Silegov was involved in a number of scandals, including backtracking procurement contracts for water and sewage work, and he ended up building a large ski lodge in Mavrovo and adding floors to his family home in Skopje without a permit.
Bogoev was closely linked to the key suspect of the major Racket scandal, Bojan Jovanovski – Boki 13. He was reportedly negotiating a deal with Boki to allow him to expand a scheme to grab publicly owned land through a bogus charity to Karpos.
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