A row broke out in parliament over yet another IPARD-linked investigation. Interior Minister Pance Toškovski and SDSM MP Slavjanka Petrovska weren't talking about figures and budgets. They were talking about photographs, garages and about who stopped the operation to arrest the director of the agricultural inspectorate, Vase Anakiev.

Anakiev was arrested on March 19 on charges of demanding 100,000 euros in bribes for the illegal import of goods. Not all the details are known - but Petrovska showed photographs of underground garages that are, as she claims, linked to the family home of agriculture minister Cvetan Tripunovski. The question she put was direct: did someone, in the Interior Ministry or in agriculture, knowingly cut off the operation before Anakiev could reach Tripunovski?

Toškovski did not answer in detail. He answered with dismissal: "These are claims closer to science fiction than to reality." And he added that the law operates "equally toward current and former officials".

That's the kind of answer that sounds firm in parliament but doesn't address the actual question. Petrovska asks: "who stopped the operation". Toškovski answers: "the law operates equally". That's not the same sentence. That's a political technique for sidestepping.

In the Balkans this is a standard template. One investigation begins, a scandal breaks out, then come the garages and photographs, then come questions no one answers, and in the end - the investigation closes with "the suspect took a bribe", without ever showing who at the top of the chain allowed him to be that free for that long.

This specific question - whether Tripunovski was the intended recipient - can't be answered with "science fiction". It can only be answered with a careful investigation that follows the money from invoice to signature. Will that investigation happen? That's the political question. Who stopped it, and who approved that it be stopped - that's the investigative element.