Zoran Zaev partied through Tetovo during his election campaign event yesterday, even as the city struggles in the aftermath of the deadly hospital fire less than a month ago, in which 14 patients and family members were burnt alive. The investigation into the fire in the hospital, which was built under a crony contract that Zaev awarded to one of his former Deputy Prime Ministers, is still on-going and is likely being delayed for after the elections.
Zaev’s day started with a visit to the village of Jelovjane, where he had musicians waiting for him. Zaev theatrically slapped money on the musicians, in a move more typical for a wedding than a political event in the aftermath of a devastating tragedy.
Hours later, SDSM staged a lavish fireworks display in the city to round up their rally.
During his speech, Zaev did express his condolences to the families of the victims, but demanded that the issue of his incompetence and likely criminal corruption is not raised in the campaign, allegedly because of “respect for the victims”.
During the visit to Tetovo, where he supported the nomination of Teuta Arifi for another term as Mayor – despite her mismanagement of the city that is often left without water and drowns in garbage – Zaev showed where his other main problem lies. He railed against the recently formed coalition between VMRO-DPMNE and the Albanian opposition parties AA and Alternative, which undercuts in Zaev’s and DUI’s near-monopoly of the Albanian vote during past election cycles. He insisted that the marriage between VMRO-DPMNE and the two Albanian parties is “doomed to divorce” and claimed that the voters of the two parties will not mutually support each other, blaming them of nationalism.
At the same time, his SDSM party engaged in fake news that incited inter-ethnic hatred, trying to undermine the opposition coalition. News outlets close to DUI and SDSM edited a video from 2016, in which a VMRO candidate participated, and replaced the original audio with a nationalist song that makes disparaging comments about the Albanians. The goal of this fake news attack was clearly to disrupt the cooperation between the opposition parties, but it also lead to spreading of a hateful song in the public – on false pretense.
Comments are closed for this post.