The government backtracked on the new composition of the Citizen Oversight Council after accusations that it wanted to control wiretapping
The ruling party briefs that after the coordination of the parliamentary group, but also due to the stormy reactions in the public, they decided not to hurry with the selection of the new composition of the Council for Civil Surveillance of Communications. There is no decision as to what to do next, except to make waves with the election of the Council.
The selection of the new composition of Civil Oversight Council, a body that will control whether the institutions that are allowed and can monitor communications are doing so legally, has been put on standby, "Sloboden Pechat" has learned, following the reactions in the public that the government completely partisans that body and the opposition's fears that it could mass wiretapping was repeated.
VMRO-DPMNE has not decided what will happen with the new proposed composition of the Council. The party briefs that everything is at stake, that is, either the proposed composition will remain, there will be partial corrections, or there will be a completely new composition of the Council.
An indirect confirmation that the government is taking a step back for the election of this body is the fact that the proposal for the composition of the Council passed the Commission for Elections and Appointments, but the President of the Assembly Afrim Gashi he did not put that point in the new plenary session.
From VMRO-DPMNE brief that after the coordination of the parliamentary group, and due to the stormy reactions in the public, they decided not to hurry with the selection of the new composition of the Council for Civil Supervision of Communications. There is no decision as to what to do next, except to make waves with the election of the Council. According to party sources, the new Council will not come to a vote in the Assembly until the end of the year, and until then they will decide whether there will be a partial change of members or the already proposed composition will be canceled and the Assembly will once again advertise for the election of new members. According to the information we have, the deputies referred to this yesterday before the leader and Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski at the session of the Executive Committee.
The reactions followed after the Parliamentary Commission made a decision to be the President of the Council Ilche Dimovski, former secretary of the municipal committee of VMRO-DPMNE from Bitola, and for members Blagoja Stojanovski, former member of parliament in several parliamentary formations from SDSM, and in the last parliamentary elections a candidate for member of parliament from the ruling ZNAM, Nikola Zaturovski – former member of the Executive Committee of VMRO-DPMNE and regional coordinator for Struga and Mirce Stoykov, former president of the Municipal Committee of VMRO-DPMNE in Kočani. The dismissed judge is still proposed as a member Stojanche Ribarev, Nafis Kazimoski и Katerina Krstevska.
Apart from the party affiliation, according to the biographies, the proposed candidates do not even have the appropriate expertise to be in the Council, which should be non-partisan and in which the members should be experts or come from the civil sector. In addition, among the candidates there are two teachers - of mathematics and history, a chemist, a lawyer, a mechanical engineer and a dismissed judge. Only one of the members is a security professor. The law on the monitoring of communications stipulates that the Council will have a president and six members (independent), three of whom are experts in the field and three from the non-governmental sector covering topics related to human rights and security.
The member of the Commission from SDSM, Ljupчоo Nikolovski, recently in a statement to the "Sloboden Pechat" accused that VMRO-DPMNE is completely controlling this body and said that they will alert all international representations and embassies in the country about the partisanship.
– This body is particularly significant and the very name of the body is the Council for Civil Oversight. The law that was passed with a two-thirds majority is reformist and followed the massive wiretapping, but it was also one of the benchmarks for the negotiations with the EU. It really deserved to be elected members with fulfilled conditions as experts or members of non-governmental organizations - Nikolovski told us then.
SDSM then demanded that the government withdraw and immediately restore the procedure within the framework of legal norms and standards. The opposition party announced that they will strongly oppose and will not allow partisanship to pass. SDSM also announced that if VMRO-DPMNE remains deaf to the warnings, they will take more radical measures.
The council carries out surveillance on its own initiative and upon a complaint from citizens, for example, if a citizen suspects that he has been eavesdropped. The council has the right to enter OTA and other authorities to perform civil control and to do so on its own initiative or upon a citizen's petition.
The previous composition of the Council never functioned and members resigned because they were not provided with the funding to function.
