Macedonia Ministers Warned Sex Lives are on Tapes

Macedonia's opposition said it had audio tapes revealing a minister's sex life, but did not wish to publish them in order to play fair.

The Social Democrats' vice president Radmila Shekerinska said her party has obtained many details about the private life of a minister and other ruling party officials, contained in the tapes it has collected on illegal surveillance.

"Off course there were many private conversations that would have been interesting for the Macedonian public and very painful for the government? If we wanted to abuse this, we would have done it already," Shekerinska told 24 Vesti.

She added that they stuck to the principle of releasing only conversations that are of public interest.

The decision to flash up alleged tapes of officials' sex lives is only one signal of what is expected to be a dirty campaign for the early elections next April.

Political analyst and former MP Mersel Biljali said Shekerinska's statement was an attempt to intimidate political adversaries.

"We all know that among the wiretapped conversations there are all kinds of things... but whatever the tapes contain, we must all make a clear distinction between the public interest and someone's privacy," Biljali said.

Communications science professor Vesna Shopar said that, "Judging by what we have seen, the campaign will be dirty and full of negative energy directed at smearing political opponents, especially now when the stakes are high."

The election in April was agreed this summer at EU-mediated talks between the government and opposition designed to end the political crisis.

The crisis resolves around opposition allegations of mass illegal surveillance by Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, which have...