English
Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski’s strong push to develop ties with the Trump administration caused a lot of anxiety in the opposition ranks, as the SDSM party was long accustomed to having preferential treatment with the US administrations. In a number of media outlets and using a number of public supporters, SDSM has tried to disparage Mickoski’s diplomatic push and undermine its effects.
But in its latest attempt, SDSM slipped up, and was forced to apologize. Their supporters in the media, especially on the social networks, have frequently attacked Mickoski’s foreign policy adviser and Deputy European Affairs Minister Viktorija Trajkov. These attacks, often coming from anonymous accounts, were frequently ugly, included photoshops of Trajkov and made up comments attributed to her. Trajkov was apparently singled out because she was part of Mickoski’s delegation during his trip to Washington for President Trump’s inauguration, and accompanied a high level delegation of Trump envoys who visited Macedonia in July.
Today, SDSM issued a statement including a video from a media appearance in which Trajkov made critical comments about the state of Macedonian diplomacy. In the radio interview, Trajkov says that our diplomacy is weak and ineffective, and is not able to secure US support in promoting our positions in the historic dispute with Bulgaria. SDSM said that the comments are proof that “the diplomacy under VMRO-DPMNE guidance is in chaos and rudderless”.
The only problem is that the comments Trajkov made dated back to 2023, when SDSM was in power and VMRO-DPMNE in the opposition. SDSM attempted to present old comments from a VMRO official as intra-party criticism of the diplomatic efforts of the Government.
I want to strongly denounce the lies contained in the SDSM press release. This desperate group of political pretenders has been revealing its desperation and lack of creativity for a long time. Lacking a political program they can offer to our citizens, they’ve been using photoshops of me, and abusing my name. I expected more from SDSM, to work on their creativity, but also on a program they will put before the citizens for the local elections, as their popularity reaches record lows and is down to 6 percent, Trajkov said in a statement she issued in response to the SDSM allegation.
After they were found out, SDSM was forced to issue an apology: “we send our sincere apology to the media and the public about the latest press release mentioning Viktorija Trajkov. It was an accidental error, and we shared old content that is not relevant for the current affairs”.
