During today’s 66th session, the Parliament passed the draft law for the prevention of corruption and the conflict of interests in first reading. The law predicts new and increased authorizations for the State Commission for Corruption Prevention and new and much strict criteria for the selection of its members.
Only the MPs from the ruling parties voted for the law while the opposition MPs were against this new law especially against the criteria and the procedure for the selection of Anti-Corruption Commission’s members.
The opposition party MPs are opposing the new enactments since Friday when the law was discussed by the Parliamentary Commission for a political system and relations among communities. It was then that the VMRO-DPMNE’s MPs such as Zoran Ilioski, Ane Lashkoska and Nevenka Stamenkovska have filed 17 complaints to the law’s content, stressing that “the state commission shouldn’t act as an investigative body”. The MPs opposed the ways of selecting members of the Anti-Corruption Commission, the possibility for the Committee to be able to demand an insight into the banking accounts, to be able to summon a person against whom there is an investigation going, the enactments according to which a suspicion can be reported for illegal financing of a political party.
The state commission for corruption prevention isn’t functioning since March this year when five out of seven members resigned because of suspicion of misuse reported by the State Audit Office.
