The five candidates for Mayor of Stip who decided to take part in the elections scheduled for December 13 began campaigning today. The elections are boycotted by all opposition parties, who say it is grossly irresponsible to hold a vote in the midst of a major second wave of the epidemic, as the number of active cases rose over 20,000.

Never the less, the ruling SDSM party is pushing Sasko Nikolov as its candidate, and he is joined by four other minor party representatives.

The Government is preparing a corona charnel. We have 1,426 deaths since the beginning of the epidemic and under Minister Filipce, Macedonia leads the region in deaths and is at a disturbing 3rd place in Europe. Last week we’ve had one death an hour on average, the opposition VMRO-DPMNE party said.

Stip is hit especially badly given its large textile sector. Mayor Blagoja Bocvarski was named to the Government, but country wide municipal elections are scheduled to take place in less than a year, meaning that the current elections in Stip and in Plasnica are hardly unnecessary.