Parliament today opens its 104th session, and the first item is the politically heaviest one: an interpellation against the work of Agriculture Minister Cvetan Tripunovski. The motion is filed by a parliamentary group led by the SDSM, and the explanation doesn't spare words: „serious suspicions of systemic corruption" in the ministry.

The opposition's arguments are three, and all of them heavy: arrests of senior officials for bribery, direct harm to the public interest, and - perhaps the most painful for farmers - the suspension of the IPARD 3 program. The MPs also claim that the measures taken reveal a risk of selective and non-transparent distribution of public money, to the detriment of those who live off the land.

The interpellation is the sharpest oversight mechanism the opposition has at its disposal without a majority - and that's exactly why its outcome is a foregone conclusion: on the votes of the ruling parties, the minister will most likely survive. But the point of an interpellation is rarely to remove a minister; the point is to force the government to defend, publicly, on camera, a portfolio in which officials have been arrested and a European program frozen. The answers from that debate go on the record.

The question hanging over the whole debate is simple: if IPARD 3 - money earmarked directly for Macedonian farmers - is suspended because of the state of the ministry, who answers for it to the fruit grower and the cattle breeder who were waiting for that money? The minister will get his chance to explain. The farmers will be listening.

The rest of the session is a legislative marathon: around 40 items, among them the election of members of the Anti-Corruption Commission, a Code of Ethics for MPs, and a long list of laws in first reading and shortened procedure - from civil procedure and the judicial service to renewable sources, weapons and VAT. The debate over Tripunovski, though, will be the one to fill the headlines - and rightly so.