Months after breaking more than 90 percent in favor of the SDSM – DUI presidential candidate Stevo Pendarovski, the villagers of Ljuboten are not amused.

Police descended on the hillside village north of Skopje and seized significant quantities of tobacco, allegedly unlawfully imported to be sold to the growing number of hand-rolled cigarette users. The damage caused to the state budget was put at 7.5 million EUR.

Villagers threatened that next time there will be response against the police.

In the future, those who come here, DUI, DPA, SDSM, it won’t end like this, a villager threatened the media.  “Zaev came here, and I told him he is overpromising. I told him, don’t promise so much, do at least one of the things you say you will. He did nothing”, another man from Ljuboten added.

Ljuboten was the site of a major incident during the 2001 insurgency, when eight soldiers were killed by mines planted by Albanian terrorists near the village. A police unit then entered the village and killed ten Albanian men. The police insisted they were killed in fighting, while the villagers claimed they were unarmed civilians.