The government: the law on coordinating the security services is NATO-compliant, but nobody applies it - so we're scrapping it

The government has a law that it says itself is good but doesn't work - and instead of making it work, it has decided to repeal it. The bill to end the validity of the Law on Coordination of the Security and Intelligence Community passed its first reading in Parliament's Defence and Security Committee, with eight votes in favour and two against.

The explanatory note, prepared by the Ministry of Interior, is worth reading twice. It says the law is "systemically well set up and conceptually aligned" with EU and NATO standards, but that its application is limited because of "institutional distrust, too narrow a scope and a lack of operational capacity" in the security and intelligence community. In other words: the rules are good, the services don't cooperate, so let's delete the rules.

The law establishes the Coordination Council between the National Security Agency, the Intelligence Agency, Military Intelligence, the Financial Police and the Public Security Bureau. SDSM MP Oliver Spasovski asked why that Council has held not a single meeting, even though the law says it must meet at least once every three months. There is no answer to that question so far.

"Incapable" - but no resignations

MP Slavjanka Petrovska, also from SDSM, turned the government's logic against it. If an official document says the services lack operational capacity and mutual trust, then, in her view, resignations should follow the vote - from the interior minister and from the directors of the ANB and the Intelligence Agency. "There is no government in our recent or distant history that has described its security and intelligence services as incapable," she said.

Petrovska recalled that the weaknesses were identified a year ago, and instead of being fixed, repeal is now being proposed. The law, she says, was key to the reforms before NATO accession.

A merger without a map

All this is happening while the government announces a merger of the ANB and the Intelligence Agency. The opposition asks whether scrapping coordination is the first step towards that - and Petrovska warns that the government has offered no clear picture of what the new setup will look like or who will oversee the services. MP Goran Misovski asked whether this means abandoning the Priebe recommendations and asked President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova for her position.

Macedonia remembers the wiretapping scandal well - the very affair that produced the Priebe recommendations. That's why this question isn't technical. If the services won't cooperate with a law, how will they cooperate without one? And who will answer for it when it turns out there was no coordination at all, exactly when it was needed most?