VMRO-DPMNE spokesman Dimitar Arsovski warned that the coming presidential elections can be heavily falsified, if they are held without early general elections at the same time. The rules for holding general elections provide that several key Government departments will be run by opposition nominees, but such assurances are not in place for presidential elections

The coming forgery of the presidential elections was announced by the way the September 2018 referendum was conducted, when, judging by the turnout reports in some voting stations, we had citizens allegedly voting every 2 seconds, which is contrary to the laws of physics. We expected that SDSM will try to delay the decision to hold early general elections, move it to their Executive Committee, then to the Central Committee. Having a broad Government would prevent them from ballot stuffing, Arsovski said in a panel with SDSM representative Kostadin Kostadinov.

SDSM still hasn’t announced if they accept holding early general elections along with the presidential elections expected in late April. The party also hasn’t announced its presidential candidate. SDSM was in talks with DUI over having a joint presidential candidate, but on Wednesday evening DUI said that they will have a candidate of their own, after these talks apparently failed.

Arsovski and Kostadinov also discussed the way SDSM is trying to impose bilingualism across the country, after the party voted for a law demanded by its Albanian partner DUI which makes the Albanian language official even in areas where no minorities live. Arsovski pointed to the recent incident when the Mayor of Veles Ace Kocevski, elected with SDSM support, threatened to leave a press conference after the ethnic Albanian Education Minister Arber Ademi decided to answer a journalist question in Albanian.

You saw how your own Mayor of Veles can’t fing a common language with your own Education Minister. And you are in the same coalition. Is this how you advance the use of languages in the country? Did you even see the video?, Arsovski asked Kostadinov.