Culmination of Mass-Surveillance Crisis in FYROM

The mass-surveillance scandal involving FYROM’s Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, carried through the action of his first cousin, Sašo Mijalkov, who is director of the Administration for Security and Counter-Espionage is still the primary ingredient in the political turmoil in FYROM. Today, Zoran Zaev, the president of the Social-Democratic Party (SDSM) decided, in the 8th episode of revealing illegal operations by the government, had press-conference with presentation of selected intercepted phone-recording. These were provided by insiders in UBK who handed them to Zaev due to their unwillingness to participate in criminal activity.
Unlike previous press-conferences, held in SDSM’s party center in the city of Skopje, this conference, which attracted 120 accredited journalists and photographers, was held in Skopje’s “Universal Hall”, a conference object with significantly greater physical capacity, unlike the small press-room in SDSM’s center. The underlining motive is providing access to a wider audience, which for the first times features a number of ambassadors of foreign countries. The press-conference, one in a series of total of 8, is based on the concept to reveal, with each successive one, evidence of governmental crime in terms of abuse of power, in this concrete case, manipulation with several prior elections (VMRO-DPMNE with Gruevski as party’s president is ruling for 9 years).

While previous ones started with several ordinary conversation of people from the government as well as with a journalist and then escalated to revelation of political prisoners, manipulation of media annexed to VMRO-DPMNE, usage of racist epithets, this one dealt primary with abuse of power in order to falsify election results. It is noteworthy that Gruevski, in defense of what cannot be defended, make several dramatic press-conferences on TV , stating that the content of conversations are not evidence of crime, but only to the fact that “politicians are humans as everybody else” and that “profanity is a feature common in private conversation”.

Gruevski stated rather pathetically that VMRO-DPMNE gains elections not by fraud, but because “citizens recognize a successful and reformatory government”. Among evidence presented in the latest press-conference, SDSM, in front of thousands of citizens, illustrated forgery of elections through following phone-calls:
-Speech of Minister of Interior Gordana Jankulovska as well as regional political leaders about forging identity cards for the purpose of creating “phantom voters” and stealing electorate lists in order to forge them from a secured depot.
-Roma politician Amdi Bajram adding list of deceased persons to a list so that fake votes may be used.
-Gordana Jankulovska demanding unsubstantiated annulations of election results in voting places in the town of Kumanovo in order to secure a victory.
-Gordana Jankulovska and Minister of Finance, Zoran Stavrevski, plotting to manipulate elections in some municipalities, while both recognizing to each other that this is a distasteful manipulation.
-Mile Janakievski speaks with a warden of “Idrizovo” prison ordering him to manipulate vote by prisoners and to General Headquarters to secure mass voting of soldiers of FYROM’s army to convince them to vote for VMRO-DPMNE.
-Martin Protuѓer asking Jankulovska to “rent” police officers as racketeers during the elections in Ohrid. Jankulovska approves this, but also stated to Protuѓer that police officers he wants in the team are “real thugs”.

-a fascinating vote-forging strategy to block most of elevators in Skopje’s buildings in order to prevent most of the old people (a demographic category mostly loyal to SDSM) to go out and vote during elections. Jankulovska accepts degradation of a police officer to common street policeman, chasing away his wife from her job and approving plan for burning of his cafeteria. Jankulovska also states that she placed police officers, known as SDSM sympathizers, on duty so that they cannot vote.

Final recapitulation of the press-conference ended with the speech of SDSM general secretary Oliver Spasovski concluding that judiciary is corrupted and influenced by the VMRO-DPMNE and that ultimate struggle must be, in absence of Rule of Law, a political one.