After a heated debate, the Constitutional court decided to take more time to discuss the 2020 law on public prosecutors, that is being challenged because of the scandalous way in which it was adopted.
The ruling coalition failed to get the necessary 81 votes, even after months of pressure and bribery of representatives, but Speaker Talat Xhaferi simply declared the first vote invalid and ordered another one. He claimed that several members of Parliament protested that their votes did not count. In the “do-over” vote, the majority had 80 votes which was declared enough to reach a two-thirds majority.
Former Justice Minister Mihajlo Manevski, who is one of the three parties challenging the law, said that the Speaker has no right to nullify a vote in the Parliament and order another vote to take place on the same proposal.
The rules of the Parliament are very clear when it comes to voting and the Speaker did not have the authority to act in the way he did. All he could do is to report the results of the vote and to say whether the law is adopted or not. And in this case, there clearly was no sufficient majority during the vote, Manevski said.
Only 74 members of Parliament voted for the law in the first vote. Justice Elena Goseva added that the Speaker did not show the statute he used to nullify the first vote, but simply said that he received complaints from two members of Parliament.
The law entrenches prosecutors loyal to the Zaev regime into top positions and makes their removal more difficult in the future. It was adopted after the revelations of spectacular corruption in the Special Prosecutor’s Office, which Zaev used to grab power after the 2015 Colored Revolution by attacking his political opponents.
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