Court Amends Macedonia Lustration Law

The law was originally planned to be applicable until 2008.

The court found that after 1991 the country switched to a democratic system and that accordingly there are other legal mechanisms to help determine the accountability of individuals who collaborated with the secret services during the post-independence period.

The court also revoked a paragraph under which an official who failed to submit a statement to Lustration Committee was to be disclosed in the official gazette. The court found that to be an unacceptable form of public discrediting.

“We are very concerned and shocked by the court’s ruling,” Silvana Boneva, a legislator from the main ruling VMRO DPMNE party, said in reaction. This represents a “serious blow to the young Macedonian democracy,” she added.

The Constitutional Court froze several provisions of the lustration law supported by the VMRO DPMNE two months ago in order to further investigate the matter. Then the ruling party slammed the judges from the court, calling them puppets in the hands of the opposition Social Democrats.

VMRO DPMNE blames the Social Democrats for protecting the wrongdoers from Macedonia’s transition from socialism to capitalism during the 1990s, when the country gained its independence from former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and emerged as a democratic society.

Macedonia is following in the steps of many former communist and socialist states which have already enacted similar laws in order to address past injustices stemming from politically motivated judicial proceedings.

The Law on Lustration was adopted in 2008, but the commission only began its work last year. Observers envisage that the lustration process will take approximately ten years to complete.