When somebody threatened Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski on Instagram, the state apparatus kicked in at a speed you rarely get to watch. The Cybercrime Unit of the Kumanovo police filed a criminal complaint with the Kumanovo Prosecutor's Office, the prosecutors opened proceedings for "endangering safety", and a pre-trial judge immediately ordered eight days of detention.

What gives the case its particular weight is who filed the complaint. Neither the prime minister nor his security detail. The police acted on their own knowledge of the offence - which is their legal right and duty when they learn of a crime from the media, social networks or public statements.

So the law exists. The question is when it switches on

Acting on one's own knowledge is not a privilege invented for this occasion. It is a mechanism written into the law and it applies to every citizen. And that is exactly where the real story starts: for how many other threats to somebody's life have the institutions activated themselves at the same speed?

The LDP pointed out that complaints about direct threats to the life of their leader Monika Zajkova, as well as of other public figures and ordinary citizens, "sit for months and years without a single institutional resolution". Dimitar Apasiev of Levica said he too had previously received similar threats without a swift institutional response. Journalists are among those who have received threats.

The double standard is not a theory, it is a difference measured in time

In one case: complaint, charges and detention within days. In the others: files that wait months and years. That is not a question of law - the law is the same. It is a question of priority.

There had already been a complaint for "violence" against a man from Struga who insulted the prime minister in Tashmarunishta during the Ilinden celebrations. Both men face a prison sentence of one to five years.

The LDP called Mickoski's statement that he knows how such things get settled if he were not an institution "bizarre" - judging that it lays bare a street-settlement mentality, behind which the entire state apparatus then immediately lines up.

Who will answer for those still waiting?

Nobody is arguing that threats against the prime minister should go unpunished. A threat to someone's life is a criminal offence, and there is no sliding scale in it according to the office someone holds. That is precisely the point.

If the police can react this fast when they know they have to, then the question is not "how did they manage it this time". The question is why that is not the standard for every complaint sitting in a drawer.

The prime minister said he expects the institutions to act within their competences. Everyone whose complaint has been waiting since last year will certainly agree with him on that.