FYROM Mass-Surveilance Scandal: The Presentation by Andrej Žernovski

Andrej Žernovski, mayor of Skopje’s municipality „Centar” (“Centre”), who, being an only mayor of a municipality of city of Skopje belonging to the opposition LDP (Liberal-Democratic Party) and who fought many legal battles for halting of the anti-rational project “Skopje 2014” vs. the central government of the city, held a press-conference exposing VMRO-DPMNE’s manipulation with 2012 elections in his municipality. The press exposing electoral fraud was held in “Best Western” hotel and referenced the 2012 election in which he defeated supermarket-chain owner Vladimir Todorović, candidate of VMRO-DPMNE.
The conversation presented in the event moderated by Žernovski featured evidence that Minister of Interior Gordana Jankulovska, in conversation with Minister Nikola Todorov, refused to accept complaints by Žernovski for alleged electoral fraud spotted during municipal elections. Another phone call by VMRO-DPMNE and an unidentified interlocutor surfaced in which massive sabotage of elevators in central Skopje was hailed as a good trick which will prevent elderly people to go to voting stations, which seems to add to similar order presented during Monday’s press-conference of SDSM. A conversation between the Chief of Administration for Security and Counter-Intelligence (UBK) Sašo Mijalkov with Janakievski was aired, which contained dissatisfaction with slight advantage for Žernovski in the midst of election and ended with a plan to shut traffic around several high-rise apartment buildings. Janakievski also contacted party activist Irena Miševa in order to secure voting in favor of VMRO-DPMNE by teachers who operate within schools in the municipality of Centar.
Most striking evidence of electoral fraud was acknowledging by Nikola Gruevski that imported Slavic citizens of Albania failed to create a large difference in favor of VMRO-DPMNE’s candidate Todorović. In order to “ameliorate” this situation, Gruevski issued an order to Janakievski that members of VMRO-DPMNE at the voting stations, where results were not in favor of VMRO-DPMNE, should proclaim most of the voting lists as null and void. Jankulovska also, after the obvious failure in Centar, required massive erasing of local government computer data, so that evidence regarding financial affairs linked to ordering of monuments related to the “Skopje 2014” project can be obscured.
It should be noted that although Liberal-Democratic Party has different ideological principles with the SDSM, both parties are in coalition as their leaderships proclaimed that struggle against rule of Gruevski and a small number of people constituting the kleptocratic inner circle are priority that allows them to put temporarily their differences aside.