President Stevo Pendarovski called on the Parliament to elect a Government that will not be tainted with corruption and will include competent officials. Pendarovski published a summary of his comments made before the Marshall Center but it’s unclear whether he meant it as a snub of the Government line-up proposed by his party leader Zoran Zaev.

Zaev’s earlier Government had a long series of corruption scandals in the short period of time it was in office, including the spectacular collapse of the Special Prosecutor’s Office – a scandal which Pendarovski recently publicly criticized.

A basic pre-condition of success is to have the most skilled persons, regardless of their political or ethnic background. I expect to see people with strong pro-European and democratic capacity, with clean anti-corruption records, Pendarovski said.

The new Government is already proposed and should be voted on on Saturday. Besides Zaev, it includes many other officials with serious corruption allegations, including Defense Minister Radmila Sekerinska and Healthcare Minister Venko Filipce who, like Zaev, were also linked with the Racket scandal. The DUI party is expected to have a much greater role in the next Government, despite the numerous allegations of corruption against its own officials, made by Zaev no less during the election campaign.