Three weeks before it was officially announced by the former President of VMRO DPMNE, Nikola Gruevski during the protests in front of the State Election Committee i.e. the desorosoization, this process was already underway with full swing. The institutions had been preparing for three weeks in advance for one of the biggest actions to put pressure and to send threats to those who criticized the previous government, informs Prizma in its analysis of this process of outstanding long controls conducted by UJP in the presence of the police.
These intensive controls that lasted a few months, starting in December 2016, of the 22 non-governmental organizations, which did not find something illegal, were not big enough reason to call those who solicited the pressure and the actors to account. It did not even bring up system-wide changes that would prevent abuse of the institutions for a clash with the civil society in the future.
“The documents we came across and the testimonials of those who took part in the process indicate that the institutions had been making decisions with very short deadlines and have been accepting the accusations submitted by the party without any selection or opposition. These was used as the only reason for initiating detailed inspections of the documentation. The State Committee for Preventing Corruption has played a key role after the media prepared the ground for further activities. From there, the matter was taken over by the Public Revenue Office, Public Prosecution, MOI, the Finance Police and the Management for Financial intelligence” wrote Prizma.
Among the organizations that were put under pressure by the government was also the Metamorphosis foundation.
-They tried to find evidence that the NGOs were used for payment of people that aren’t working for the organizations but instead are working in some way for SDSM. They didn’t find any evidence of any wrongdoing – Filip Stojanovski of Metamorphosis was quoted for Prizma’s article.
