Faced with an embarrassing public plea from the hospital in his hometown of Strumica, that desperately asked for donations to buy an ambulance vehicle, Prime Minister Zoran Zaev is reviving his promise to sell the armored Mercedes vehicle and use the proceeds to buy ambulances. Zaev used the purchase of the car, which is in use to transport high ranking foreign dignitaries visiting Macedonia, to prosecute former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and former Interior Minister Gordana Jankuloska.

Prosecutors working in collusion with Zaev’s SDSM party insisted that the purchase amounted to abuse of office, despite the fact that the money were not embezzled and the car was bought and paid for, and is now in use. Jankuloska recently began serving out her sentence. Meanwhile, Zaev’s years old promise that the vehicle will be sold and the money given to the hard strapped public healthcare system became a running joke.

The trial is now finished and we can begin to make an estimate what would be the asking price and act accordingly, Zaev said.

The manager of the Strumica hospital was pressured to delete the Facebook plea for donations after it became a major source of embarrassment for the Government. Zaev’s promise during the 2016 election campaign was that the public will no longer have to collect donations for medical treatment and all expenses will be paid by confiscating money from criminals and oligarchs and sale of items such as the Mercedes. The promise completely failed on both ends.

VMRO-DPMNE member of Parliament Antonio Milososki shared a video from a rally Zaev held in 2016, flat out promising that the vehicle worth some 600,000 EUR will be sold and new ambulances bought for hospitals across the country.