Survey: Spasovski most responsible for Gruevski’s escape

The government knew about the political asylum of former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, and the most responsible for his escape is Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski. This is the perception and opinion of the citizens who were part of the public opinion survey, part of the Telma and MCIC project conducted by M-prospect – Skopje.

The survey contains four issues related to current political developments. More than half of the respondents do not approve of Gruevski’s political asylum in Hungary, and just over 20 percent have nothing against the asylum that the former prime minister was granted. About 44% of the respondents believe that the government knew about Gruevski’s political asylum, while 25% said Gruevski was granted asylum without the knowledge of the government.

Over 20 percent of respondents believe that the most responsible for Gruevski’s escape is Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski. In the survey as the possibility of who is responsible for the escape, except for the Ministry of Interior, the government, the court, the Hungarian government and others are listed, but the Special Public Prosecutor’s Office which leads all the cases against Gruevski has not been mentioned.

About 15 per cent of the examined blame the authorities for the escape, 6.4 per cent say that the blame is in the court, and 9.3 per cent find responsibility for the escape with the Hungarian authorities.

The last question concerns 30-day detention measures for former head of secret police Saso Mijalkov and former government officials Mile Janakieski and Kiril Bozinovski. Almost 50 percent, or 49 percent of the respondents said that the measure of detention for former officials was aimed at preventing other escapes, and 21.4 per cent said that the detentions were determined as revenge for Gruevski’s escape.

The survey was conducted on a sample of 800 respondents over 18 years of age, nationally representative by sex, age, ethnicity, region and place of residence.