Northern Macedonia / Technical, Inefficiencies and Pressure Inciting

This form of the wide government for the organisation of free and democratic elections, in which the opposition with two ministers and three deputy ministers also participate, was installed in the 2016 elections following international community's estimates that the state and the “institutions were caught” and allegations that elections in the past period were manipulated by Nikola Gruevski's former power.

A law by which this form of government was formalised was adopted after these elections, and under which the technical government will start operating 100 days before any cycle of parliamentary elections, while ending with the certificate of the election outcome.

But connoisseurs of political and legal issues say that clashes between parties have lost the sense of this government, which had the primary role of organising and maintaining elections, but that actually did not happen.

The technical government known as the Circular Government was undoubtedly unequivocal for the fact that there was conflict of interest among political parties. This is not only my opinion but also many other personalities that follow political developments. This government, in this form, was not in charge of organising and managing the election process. Members of this government held an account for the interests of their parties rather than for the election process, so I consider that such a form of government should not work because we are witnessing that during its functioning we have had more quarrels among parties than work to organise elections”, says Temelko Ristevski, expert on constitutional issues.

Even Bashkim Selmani, a political connoisseur, tells Radio Free Europe that the technical government has not only been ineffective, but in many cases has complicated the work even more, as is the case with pandemic, namely measures for protection from infection, which were to be implemented by the MPB, which was run by the opposition framework, but was targeted by criticism for improper action.

In this case, there have been more abuses than helping the development process or solving problems. This means that political parties never give up group and party interests at the moment when the priority should be general interest. This government had the chance to prove that it is in the interest of citizens, but unfortunately it proved the opposite, so even in extraordinary situations that their stubbornness and group interests are above the state and on general interests”, Selmani estimates.

But, the numerous clashes between ministers of two political blocs, impasses in the work of each other have lost the sense of this government that even the two main protagonists, Zoran Zaev of the LSDM and Hristian Mickovski of the VMRO-DPMNE, in a televised debate, have agreed that they must end such a government, as they said, have been unfriendly about what had been formed.

Experts say parties in the future more should commit to strengthening controlling troops and increasing independence in their work, such as the State Commission for Prevention of Corruption, which should play an important role in detecting party abuses, in particular in the election period.