republic. It was chaired by Krste Crvenkovski (Macedonia) and its members were Đuro Pucar (Bosnia), Blažo Jovanović (Montenegro), Dobrivoje Radosavljević (Serbia), Miko Tripalo (Croatia), and France Popit (Slovenia). Even though they were not members of the commission, the investigation was directed by Kardelj, Bakarić, and Stambolić who controlled the commission through influence exerted on its members. Ranković was not informed of the accusations and the investigation until shortly before the plenum held on Brijuni Islands on 1 July 1966. Ranković was eventually removed from all his offices and expelled from the central committee. His allies and successors as federal ministers of the interior, Svetislav Stefanović and Vojin Lukić, were also dismissed and expelled from the SKJ. On the initiative of SKJ's Kosovo organisation, supported by the SKCG, the SKBiH, and the SKM, Ranković was also expelled from the SKJ. Even though the SKJ took care to replace Ranković in all his former federal posts with ethnic Serbs, his ouster was perceived in Serbia and elsewhere in Yugoslavia as a Serbian defeat or even humiliation, resulting in Serb resentment. Shortly after the fall of Ranković, the SKM of Macedonia called for political reforms. They proposed even greater decentralisation of the SKJ and giving veto powers to republican branches at federal-level decision-making by the SKJ. The plan was opposed by the SKS in Serbia but was supported to various degrees by others. While the debate was ongoing, the SKS leadership was replaced by liberal-leaning anti-nationalists Marko Nikezić and Latinka Perović who were made president of the central committee and the secretary of the executive committee respectively. While Nikezić and Perović did not support the economic aspects of the reform advocated by the SKH in Croatia, they welcomed the call for greater liberalisation of media and politics. In 1969, the 9th Congress remained silent on the veto rights, but granted the branches the right to appoint federal-level officials and adopt their own statutes. Provincial SKJ organisations in Kosovo and Vojvodina were raised to the level of provincial communist parties in 1968. Thus were formed the League of Communists of Vojvodina (, SKV) and the League of Communists of Kosovo (, SKK), which were simultaneously part of the Serbian SKS and the federal SKJ. This left only the party organisation in the JNA under direct control of the federal-level SKJ. Croatian Spring and purge of reformists In the atmosphere of the inter-republican disagreement on