On a scale of 1 to 10, the leader of the Democratic Union, Pavle Trajanov, gives Macedonia a clean ten in terms of corruption.

So 10, there’s a clean ten. We have a strong process that continues to criminalize, crime in this country has become a value category, not an evil that we have to deal with. Crime is slowly biting and eating the state and that’s why it doesn’t work. Now they are talking about the funds being emptied, it is difficult to close the necessary budget items… We don’t need anything else, to have a system to stop stealing from this country and then there will be money for everything. This people cannot create as much as the government can destroy, spoil or steal. It’s an essential problem around corruption and crime, he said in an interview with Radio Free Europe

He commented on the fact that so far no DUI official has been held accountable for anything:

It is tied to the indiscriminate fight against corruption and crime. All institutions are partisan. In the seven institutions that are responsible for the fight against corruption, against serious forms of crime, party people are in charge. They cannot start an operational investigation against a public office holder if it is a DUI staff, because it has a strong mechanism to influence whether the Government will continue to exist or not. And here is the whole thing, here is the dam, here is the influence of the ministers, of the Prime Minister on these institutions, not to open cases, even where it is obvious that there is a crime, not to open it, not to check it, yes they do not document it and of course do not file criminal charges against some of the holders of high positions if it is DUI personnel.

Asked if in reality DUI is the boss in the country, he says:

A year ago, after the formation of this Government, I pointed out that the Prime Minister should not be servile towards DUI. So, he should act like the Prime Minister, take care of the strategic national and state interests and act like that, and all the ministers should know their place. They should refer to the Prime Minister, conditionally speaking, and agree on how they will implement the program objectives, and not that we essentially have two governments – one led by Ali Ahmeti and another part of the government led by Kovacevski. ..As a result of such an organized orchestra like the Government, we have a huge dissatisfaction from the citizens. They are dissatisfied with how and in what way the Government functions or does not function, especially individual ministries. So, the main remark of the citizens is that there is no order in the country and that the institutions are not functioning.