Macedonia Court May Curb Lustration Law Again

The Constitutional Court during session

The law, which was designed to identify those suspected of acting as police informants under the former Communist regime, has not been without controversy.

In the future, Macedonia's Constitutional Court may “reduce the time span” of the law designed to root out former Communist-era spies and “restrict the scope of professions” that are subject to check-ups, an unnamed source from the court told Alfa TV.

This would be the second time that the Court has tackled this divisive law, which was adopted in 2008 at the behest of Nikola Gruevski's ruling VMRO DPMNE party.

In March 2010 the Court already scrapped one of the law's provisions, shortening the time span of the lustration process, which was originally intended to be applicable until 2008.

The Court ruled that the law may only cover the period from 1945 to 1991, the lifetime of Federal Yugoslavia, and not the period after the country gained independence.

The same source said the Court this time “will not make a different decision from its previous one, as legal and social conditions since then have remained the same”.

The first move to curb the lustration law did not last long. In March, parliament again widened the span of the law even further - it is now applicable until 2019.
 
In addition, MPs voted to broaden the scope of professions subjected to check-ups to include journalists, NGOs, clergy and members of other professions.

Originally the law was intended to check only current politicians and holders of public office.

A VMRO DPMNE MP, Silvana Boneva, who last March criticised the Court's attempt to restrict the lustration law, yesterday reiterated that it was only intended to amend injustices and root out former informants.

Macedonia is following in the steps of some former Communist states, which have enacted similar laws in order to address past injustices stemming from politically motivated judicial proceedings.

But several controversial cases have sparked complaints that the lustration law is being used selectively to target political opponents of the centre-right government.

The first person to be pronounced a former spy under the law last September was none other than the former head of the Constitutional Court, Trendafil Ivanovski, under whose presidency the court had scrapped parts of the law in the first place. Ivanovski claimed the case against him was clear retaliation.

Another recent case concerns the prominent drama director and head of the Open Society Foundation in Macedonia, Vladimir Milcin. In July he was called a former police collaborator. Milcin and his NGO have often crossed swords with the authorities.
Milcin said he also suspected the accusation made against him was politically motivated.

Meanwhile, at the end of last year the lustration commission decided not to investigate spy allegations made against several top officials from the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, the junior ethnic Albanian party in the coalition government.

The commission’s stated reason for this was that the alleged spy files it had received from anonymous sources were photocopies.