Macedonia PM Slams Constitutional Court

The premier stood in opposition to the decision of the Constitutional Court to probe the provision of the new lustration law that concerns informants from this era.
 
“We are the greatest supporters of the lustration but we do not have influence on the Constitutional Court”, Gruevski said. “One other party unfortunately does has influence,” he noted, hinting that the main opposition Social Democrats party, SDSM, was somehow involved in the latest decision.
 
The Constitutional Court recently temporarily froze several articles of the lustration law in order to investigate their legality under the constitution. The court intends to consider whether it would be constitutional to let lustration apply to secret service informants from 1991 and onwards. It also froze the lustration of heads of religious communities and several other articles.

Gruevski supported the people who protested in front of the court on Saturday against the freezing of the provisions.

About one hundred people, who said they were victims or relatives of victims of the secret service informants, blamed the count for trying to protect their wrongdoers.

The Social Democrats responded to the situation, saying that it was yet another attempt by Gruevski to intimidate the Court.

The PM recently repeatedly slammed the Court for being a puppet of the SDSM after it annulled as unconstitutional several government initiated provisions from the past year, including one for religious classes in schools.
 
The lustration law was part of the agenda of Gruevski’s main ruling centre-right VMRO-DPMNE party when it came to power in 2006.
 
The law was intended to instigate a nationwide lustration process that would prohibit former collaborators and informants of the secret services of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, SFRY, and the early Macedonian state, from the years 1944-2008, from holding public office.

The Commission for Verification of Facts earlier said a total of 60 senior officials, including the head of state, president of the parliament, prime minister and government ministers had passed the lustration successfully. The country recently started the lustration of judges.