Mickoski Accepts Vetting, With a Condition: First the Opposition Must Answer for Article 353, Dubai and the Yacht in Paliouri

Everyone wants vetting. At least that's how it sounds this week. In its new policy platform, SDSM promises "vetting to the root", and Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski says he has no problem with that at all - extend it to families, and add a polygraph if need be. Only, the opposition has to answer first.

What the opposition is proposing

In its platform "Your State - Your Chance", SDSM promises to check the origin of the assets of all officials from independence in 1991 to the present day and to confiscate anything acquired illegally. Then vetting in the judiciary too, with checks on the assets and integrity of judges and prosecutors, plus the abolition of legal protections and immunity. Leader Venko Filipče says the law would cover all officials without exception, himself included, and that the checks would be done by foreign experts.

What the government says

Mickoski first said there's no need to wait for a law to do vetting. "Let there be a draft law, nobody disputes that. But the Public Revenue Office can do vetting right now," he said in Šuto Orizari, listing "golden visas in exotic destinations like Dubai", "expensive yachts on the Aegean coast" and expensive cars owned by firms that won coal tenders. Then he offered the polygraph, "so that every politician can say there how much they stole, how they stole - those from the opposition, of course".

A day later, in a TV interview, the tone was the same. He and his family, he says, were fully vetted back when SDSM and DUI were in power. "But that's not important," the prime minister continued, setting out his conditions in the form of questions: why those who believe in vetting changed the Criminal Code "with a European flag" and deleted Article 353, how one gets a golden visa in Dubai, what influence "the vitamin D3 on the yacht in Paliouri" had, and "how teenagers become owners of shopping centres".

Vetting - but for the others

Strip away the rhetoric and this is what's left: the opposition wants a law that checks everyone, with foreigners running the process. The government says the tools already exist - and then immediately says who it expects the polygraph to catch. Both sides want vetting, but each is convinced that in the end it's the other side that will fall.

And the Public Revenue Office, which the prime minister is passing the ball to, already has all the tools right now, by his own account. If it can check "immediately", as Mickoski says, why did that have to wait for somebody's policy platform?

The prime minister, by the way, didn't rule out early elections either. The government has a four-year mandate, he says, but if the opposition asks for it, they're ready. "In politics, never say never."