The national security service, acting on orders from Macedonia’s conservative and increasingly authoritarian government, was behind the wiretapping scandal that has the small nation on the edge of cracking, a new report says.
The release of the document on Friday last week by the European Commission followed another round of unsuccessful talks in the capital, Skopje, aimed at defusing the crisis, one of the biggest the country of 2 million has faced since gaining independence in 1991.
Four political leaders, along with the ambassadors of the EU and US, failed on Friday to reach an agreement on a transitional government that would prepare the country for snap elections in April next year.
“It sounds ridiculous that the political elite of a developed European country lacks the moral integrity so much that it needs an intervention from the EU and the US to solve its own problems,” Albert Musliu from the local Helsinki Committee, a human rights group, said in an interview on Sunday. “But unfortunately, it’s true.”
Still, the negotiators, Nikola Gruevski, who has been Macedonia’s prime minister since 2006; Zoran Zaev of the opposition Social Democratic Union of Macedonia; and the leaders of two smaller parties representing the country’s Albanian minority, agreed to carry out, without delay, the changes pushed by EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn.
“There is no room for compromise now,” Musliu said. “All political leaders need to act as swiftly as possible to restore the trust of the society to public institutions that has been reduced to a minimum in recent months.”
The report, the results of an investigation into 670,000 illegally recorded conversations from more than 20,000 telephone numbers, exposed the creaky democratic structure in Macedonia.
According to the document, prepared by independent experts, the government misused national security services “to control top officials in the public administration, prosecutors, judges and political opponents.”
The report also points to the “apparent direct involvement of senior government and party officials in electoral fraud, corruption, abuse of power and authority, conflict of interest, blackmail, extortion, criminal damage,” as well as “unacceptable political interference in the nomination/appointment of judges.”
Gruevski was far from apologetic when he spoke at an anniversary celebration for his party on Saturday evening. He accused an unnamed organization, probably a foreign intelligence service, of having paid “a lot of money to some people who can make numerous wiretapped recordings” with the aim of “brutally destroying” his party and “introducing fear among the people.”
“But instead of succeeding in that, they will destroy themselves, entering into the trap of early elections in which we will win,” Gruevski said.
Jabir Deralla, the founder and president of Civil, a human rights organization in Macedonia, described the speech as “explosive, threatening and populist.”
“Gruevski has led a government in an extremely criminal manner,” Deralla said in an interview on Sunday. “The wiretapped conversations reveal crimes for which, in a normal country, he and many members of his government would have been sent to prison for quite many years.”
According to news reports, Gruevski is ready to accept any solution, including the creation of a transitional government, as long as he remains in power.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not