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AA Non-Paper Rule Of ALLIANCE FOR THE ALBANIANS NON-PAPER - SDSM-DUI GOVERNMENT ASSAULTS ON THE RULE OF LAW: BREACHING EUROPEAN VALUES IN THE NAME OF EU INTEGRATION As a resolutely pro-European force and a strong believer that North Macedonia has no other perspective besides EU and NATO, the Alliance for the Albanians has demonstrated on every occasion since its establishment in 2015 that it is ready to make any sacrifice to materialise the Euro-Atlantic perspective of North Macedonia. The Alliance for the Albanians has acted as a reliable partner in implementing the Przino Agreement and the EC’s Urgent Reform Priorities deriving from the Priebe Report. It has also played an important role in putting an end to the Gruevski regime, consolidated by VMRO-DPMNE with the help of its Albanian partner, the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), amid state capture, international isolation and politically staged events against innocent Albanians. In January 2019, the Alliance for the Albanians voted in favour of the constitutional reforms that completed the ratification process of the Prespa Agreement, despite having strong concerns on the constitutional amendments and the agreement itself which attempted to create a Macedonian nation-state and ignored the country’s multinational character. With the Prespa Agreement ratified, a dark page of the country’s history has been turned. North Macedonia now needs a paradigm shift to materialise the societal transformation called for in the EU enlargement strategy “A credible enlargement perspective for and enhanced EU engagement with the Western Balkans” (February 2018). This requires moving from rhetoric to action, and taking drastic measures to end state capture and strengthen the rule of law, while rooting out corrupted politicians. North Macedonia’s path towards the EU has been spelled out by the Council of the EU in its conclusions on enlargement of 26 June 2018. EU leaders have explicitly linked the decision to open accession negotiations with North Macedonia’s to the country’s demonstrating tangible and sustained results on: - accountability for the attack on Parliament of 27 April 2017; - judicial reforms and proactive investigations, prosecutions and final convictions in corruption and organised crime cases, including at high level and in relation to the wrong-doings revealed by the 2015 wiretaps; - intelligence and security services reform and; - public administration reform. A failure to deliver on these conditions will result in another refusal by the European Council of June 2019 to open accessions talks with North Macedonia. It will also lead to disappointment and disillusion among North Macedonia’s citizens, and therefore undermine popular support for the European project as a whole, in a state that is unable to affirm the EU’s common values in the functioning of its institutions. The process that led to the ratification of the Prespa Agreement and ongoing processes that are crucial for the opening EU accession talks have been marked by multiple assaults on the rule of law, signalling a new state capture by the SDSM-DUI government. 1. Accountability for the attack on Parliament on 27 April 2017 The attempted coup of 27 April 2017 orchestrated by the Gruevski regime was an unprecedented terrorist attack on democracy. Among the over 100 people injured, the most seriously damaged was the leader of the Alliance for the Albanians, Ziadin Sela, who was one of the key targets of the mob and was left for dead in the corridors of Parliament, owing his life only to the courageous intervention of Parliament security officer Abdulfetah Alimi. 33 people were charged with “terrorist endangerment of national security” and with involvement in violence, including former and current VMRO-DPMNE elected officials, senior police officials, security officers, mobsters and other VMRO-DPMNE supporters. Abdulfetah Alimi, one of the few heroes of the night of April 27th, was charged for handing over keys to a hierarchical superior, the chief of security of Parliament Speaker. On 18 December 2018 Parliament passed through a shorted procedure a controversial amnesty law backed by the ruling coalition and VMRO-DPMNE that led to the selective amnesty of 15 of the accused, including all five MPs initially charged: Krsto Mukoski and Sasho Vasilevski, who opened the Parliament main door, as well as Ljuben Arnaudov, Ljupco Dimovski and convicted war criminal Johan Tarculovski who allowed the crowd in. Most of the above MPs were part of the two thirds majority that voted the start of constitutional reforms on 19 October 2018 and completed them on 11 January 2019, thus raising reasonable suspicions that the ruling coalition had bought their votes in eXchange for freedom. In February 2019, the Public Prosecutor's Office indicted five people suspected of being the organisers of the attack: former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, former Parliament Speaker Trajko Veljanoski, former Transport Minister Mile Janakieski, former Labour Minister Spiro Ristovski and former intelligence officer Nikola Boskoski. While Gruevski has conveniently fled to Hungary in November 2018 despite the government possessing clear indications that he was preparing his escape in the preceding weeks, Veljanovski has avoided jail with support from the ruling coalition. In total violation of the Constitution and of the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly, the ruling coalition failed to put to vote the court’s request to lift Veljanovski’s immunity. Nikola Boskoski is hiding in Greece. On 15 March 2019, the Skopje Criminal Court pronounced jail sentences towards 16 people who didn’t benefit from amnesty, including police, security and intelligence officers as well as some mobsters. Abdulfetah Alimi was sentenced to seven years in jail. Accountability for the attempted coup of 27 April 2017 has not been established. With Gruevski walking free in an EU member state and with Veljanovski and the five other MPs still in office, political accountability has been denied by the SDSM-DUI coalition. Worse, the whole process has become an absolute farce with the sentencing of Abdulfetah Alimi, which constitutes a direct attack on the leader of the Alliance for the Albanians by the ruling coalition and an intolerable attempt to share the responsibility of April 27th between Macedonians and Albanians in the eyes of the public. 2. Judicial reforms and proactive investigations, prosecutions and final convictions in corruption and organised crime cases Despite significant support by citizens, the Albanian opposition, the EU and the US, the Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) has failed to rebuild trust in the criminal justice system following the 2015 wiretapping scandal. The SPO was established by Parliament in September 2015 as an autonomous body, with a limited duration of five years (with possibility of eXtension) and a deadline to file indictments by 30 June 2017. Although it received more than 540,000 audio-files of intercepted communications and siX boXes of transcripts, the SPO managed to file only 20 indictments by the statutory deadline. The SPO also took over a number of sensitive cases from the Public Prosecutor’s Office (PPO), including Coup, Sopot, Spy, and Smiljkovci Lake murders (Monster), and has initiated investigations and indictments in a dozen of other cases after the statutory deadline. However, the number of convictions is negligible. Moreover, with the eXception of the Titanic 3 case involving MP Ejup Alimi, the SPO has largely spared DUI officials in its indictments during the statutory period, whereas DUI was a pillar of the Gruevski regime and is involved in large scale corruption. In this conteXt and just a few days before the 11 January 2019 vote on the constitutional reforms, the ruling coalition passed on 28 December 2018 through a shortened procedure a law amending the Criminal Code. This law has put into question many SPO cases by introducing lower penalties in some crimes, requalifying others and allowing further eXpirations of the statute of limitations. The ruling coalition initiated in March 2019 another attack on the SPO through a draft law regulating the future status and competencies of SPO. According to this draft, SPO would lose its autonomy by becoming part of the PPO while its prosecutors would be elected by the Council of Public Prosecutors controlled by SDSM and DUI through their political appointees. Its mandate would also be significantly weakened. The most concerning proposals are that the SPO successor would be divested of cases filed for indictment after the statutory deadline of 30 June 2017 and it wouldn’t be able to process wiretapping materials after 15 September 2020, while those materials wouldn’t be accepted as evidence in the cases filed for indictment after 30 June 2017. These (draft) laws sponsored by the ruling coalition mean that a significant number of corrupt politicians targeted by the SPO will not be held to account. This includes some of the eight former VMRO-DPMNE MPs which traded their votes in eXchange for tailor-made laws ensuring freedom for them or their relatives, as well as a significant number of SDSM, DUI and VMRO-DPMNE officials indicted or investigated by SPO. Among them are the DUI leader Ali Ahmeti, Deputy Prime Minister for EU Integration Bujar Osmani, former UBK chief Saso Mijalkov and his business associate Jordan Kamchev, former Deputy Prime Minister Zoran Stavrevski, VMRO MP Antonio Milososki, T-Mobile CEO Zarko Llukovski and GROM party leader Stevco Jakimovski. The draft law on SPO would also mean that highly sensitive cases such as Smiljkovci Lake murders (Monster) and Magyar Telekom which involves former SDSM Prime Minister Vlado Buckovski, former DUI Deputy Prime Minister Musa Dzaferi and DUI leader Ali Ahmeti will remained unsolved. A few weeks ahead of the Presidential election of 21 April 2019, this move by the SDSM raises suspicions that another tailor-made law is being processed in eXchange for support to their presidential candidate by DUI and other smaller parties involved in corruption, while giving enough concessions to VMRO-DPMNE to ensure their participation to the election which risks failing in case they would boycott.
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