Amnesty of two highly placed suspects in spying
scandal brings demand for president's ouster.
Todor Stojcevski
President Boris Trajkovski is facing threats of
possible impeachment for quashing charges against two
top intelligence officials accused of tapping telephones
in a scandal labelled the Macedonian Watergate.
Trajkovski last week issued a presidential decree
pardoning Dosta Dimovska, currently head of the
intelligence agency, and Aleksandar Cvetkov, a former
senior interior ministry official, a week after the
prosecutor filed charges against them over the affair.
In the ensuing storm of protest, critics said
presidential pardons could be exercised only after a
conviction, not before the charges even came to court.
Trajkovski appointed Dimovska to her present job
after she resigned all her positions in the VMRO-DPMNE
party, which was thrown out of power in last year's
general election.
She was interior minister in the VMRO-DPMNE
administration when the phone tapping first came to
light in January 2001. The then opposition Social
Democrat party presented transcripts of tapped phone
conversations made by 190 people including opposition
leaders, prominent politicians, journalists - as well as
Trajkovski himself.
A statement from the president's office last week
said there were "no documents or evidence to prove
the so-called phone-tapping affair". He said the
charges were brought for political motives.
The Social Democrats, now in power, denounced the
decision as shocking. Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski
commented, "Until today nobody was sure whether
Dosta Dimovska and Aleksandar Cvetkov were guilty. But
there is no more room for doubt."
The prime minister said Trajkovski had
"seriously violated the human rights of hundreds of
citizens". He called on Trajkovski to explain his
decision.
Skopje media immediately speculated that Trajkovski
could face possible impeachment. "Leave!" said
a front page headline in the daily Vest next to a photo
of the president. Other papers accused Trajkovski of
abusing his presidential rights by blocking the
judiciary in one of the biggest scandals since Macedonia
became independent.
The president's office said the people who really
ordered and carried out the phone tapping had escaped
prosecution.
Speaking about the pardon, Dimovska told Radio Free
Europe, " A prosecution would weaken my position
and obstruct my return to the political scene. If I were
removed from my current post, the position of the
president would also be weakened ahead of presidential
elections."
Local media have long speculated that Dimovska and
Trajkovski, once prominent members of VMRO, would form
their own party or try to win over some factions ahead
of its congress in May. They both left the VMRO over
disputes with its leader Ljubco Georgievski.
Initially, the Social Democrats said there was no
legal ground for impeachment of the president but
Crvenkovski said later that a final decision would be
taken after they heard his explanation. "At this
point all options remain open," he said.
Impeachment could be initiated if two-thirds of the
deputies in parliament requested an assessment by the
constitutional court on whether the president acted
within the framework of the constitution. If this court
decided the president had acted improperly he would
automatically lose his job.
Trajkovski issued a second statement saying he had
notified the government of his decision and had acted
within his constitutional authority. He also accused the
government of having failed in the past to investigate
financial pyramid schemes and Macedonian connections
with Serb mafia gangs.
Legal experts generally agreed that Trajkovski's
pardon decree was technically legal but politically
unwise. They said the case set a new precedent since
there had never before been a case where a defendant was
pardoned prior to conviction.
Trajkovski's former tutor, law professor Gorge
Marijanovic, told the newspaper Utrinski vesnik,
"I'm really sorry that I can't change the grades I
gave Trajkovski when he was a student."
The Association of Macedonian Journalists, on behalf
of journalists who were tapped, published forms in the
press for readers to file criminal charges against
Dimovska.
Stevan Pavlovski, a former public prosecutor, told
IWPR that Dimovska could not be criminally prosecuted as
the journalists demanded, now that she had been
pardoned.
The lawyer acting for the 18 journalists who were
tapped, Saso Andonovski, told IWPR he would continue to
battle for compensation. "Trajkovski's decision is
good for us since it confirmed who was the culprit in
this affair," he said.
Todor Stojcevski is a journalist at the weekly
political magazine Denes.