English
The SDSM party faced significant defection after Jovan Despotovski came out with strongly worded criticism of the actions of party leader Venko Filipce, which prompted a push to remove him from party membership. Despotovski was a confidant of former party leader Radmila Sekerinska, a key person in Sekerinska’s led EU integration unit in the Government, and was later appointed to prominent offices by Zaev and even ran for party leader against Filipce.
His criticism against SDSM was made in a TV interview, at a time when the party is engaged in an unexplicable campaign of aggressively worded press releases aimed against the Government, VMRO-DPMNE and media outlets (including journalists who supported SDSM but are now critics of Filipce). The statement seem written by Serbian PR experts and deal with Serbian politics more than they do with Macedonian events, trying to connect the political developments in the two countries. SDSM also began a campaign accusing the Government of planning to bring refused asylum seekers from the UK and has warned the public of threats of rapes, crime and diseases that the migrants would bring, mystifying many of its supporters.
I have been absolutely moderate in my public comments, even when talking about people who deserve a stricter response. And if even this moderation is now a threat to the SDSM party leadership, then the party has much greater problems than we thought. SDSM has and will have much greater officials than its current leader, and yet none of them placed themselves above the party, above our family, Despotovski said, talking about SDSM leader Filipce. The party, that lost badly in the local elections, already faces rebellions in its branches in Kumanovo and Strumica, as well as the defection of former Skopje Mayor Petre Silegov, and a rumored fraction planned by former officials Andrej Petrov and Igor Ivanovski, who add to its problems in the important Skopje branch.
SDSM responded to the allegations by accusing Despotovski of coordinating his criticism with VMRO-DPMNE.
Despotovski did not deny his cooperation with VMRO. He did not deny coordinating with the articles published by Geroski against SDSM. SDSM members can now see this coordinated action that VMRO is engaged in trying to collapse SDSM from within, the opposition party said in a statement, in which it accuses Despotovski of treason. The party is also attacking its once friendly journalist Branko Geroski, who also published a number of columns attacking SDSM’s strange PR campaign over the past weeks, and has used insulting language about him. SDSM attack commentators are going after Despotovski, accusing him of corruption in his term as Zaev’s head of the agency that distributes grants to technologically advanced companies, and the industrial zones company, and insist that he is trying to avoid prosecution by accusing his own party.
There is no coordinated attack on SDS. There are coordinated revelations that Zoran Zaev is building a residential building in Dubai and Venko Filipce has a golden Dubai visa. That is why SDS is in coordinated collapse, VMRO-DPMNE responded briefly.
