Macedonia Informant Probe 'Needs Greater Access'

Commission officials say the current law, enacted in 2008, allows state officials to be selective in the information it gives them.

Janakie Vitanovski, the head of the commission, told Balkan Insight: "So far we have got the data we asked for, but we can not be certain whether the institutions are giving us the entire data records or just parts. That is why we are asking to review the data on our own".

"We are suggesting now changes to the core of the law and for that, a political will is going to be necessary” he said.

He said his office had filed its demands to parliament and he expected them to be discussed as soon as possible after the parliamentary summer break ended on August 20.

For the last 18 months the Lustration Commission has been checking to see whether current public servants are informants of the secret services from the former socialist Yugoslav, SFRY, era.

But they say they are dependent on information provided by the secret police, the army, the intelligence agency and the state archive.

Vitanovski told Balkan Insight that the procedure for all 120 Macedonian legislators was not over but his office prevented him from disclosing whether any of those still being probed may have been informants or not.

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

The law prevents the public disclosure of informants' names, but demands their resignation from state service if the commission proves they were involved in informing on fellow citizens.  

From January to July 2010 the commission received 2265 statements from officials stating they were not informants.

The commission will next check judges from the supreme and the constitutional courts.

Observers envisage that the process will take approximately 10 years to complete.

The law states any state officials currently in office must resign or be fired if they are found to have been informants.

Although the Law on Lustration was adopted in 2008, the commission only began its work last year, covering files from the 1945 to 1991 period when the former federative SFRY existed, and before Macedonia gained independence and became a democratic society.

Since the start of the lustration process, the commission has so far determined that none of the government ministers was a former informant of the secret services.