Businessman and political activist Ljupco Palevski was detained on Thursday after he aired an illegally recorded phone conversation between Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski from SDSM and former Interior Minister Gordana Jankuloska from VMRO-DPMNE.

Palevski organized a public meeting in Prilep, and played the recording which appears to show Spasovski and Jankuloska discussing a law or regulation that was supposed to be adopted. Palevski aired only a brief portion of the conversation, without specifying when it occurred, and said it illustrates that the two parties have secretly been coordinating their actions.

A former SDSM official, Palevski is denouncing the American campaign to control political events in Macedonia and to rename the country. It’s not clear whether the recording he aired comes from the cache of wiretaps which former state security chief Zoran Verusevski gave to SDSM leader Zoran Zaev in 2014, which sparked the 2015 political crisis in Macedonia, or if the recording comes from a different wiretapping operation. His supporters point out that, after SDSM used tactics such as publicly airing illegally recorded phone conversations to assume power in Macedonia, now they are arresting a political activist who is doing the same.

I was detained for 24 hours. We see that their system is not as strong as they present it, all it takes is courage to beat them, Palevski said in a live Facebook address on Friday evening.

His “Third option” movement is calling for a boycott of the presidential elections, accusing both SDSM and VMRO-DPMNE of the forced name change and claiming that voting will legitimize the new name.