In an interview with the Kurir news site, opposition leader Hristijan Mickoski responded to the shocking comment from President Stevo Pendarovski, who advised the young to leave the country. Speaking at a youth conference in Novi Sad, Pendarovski said that, if he weren’t President, he would pack up and leave Macedonia too, rather than wait endlessly for the opening of EU accession talks and live with on 400 EUR a month.

President Pendarovski was elected on the ticket of a party that has been in charge for there years now. And now he says he wants to live the country because its unliveable. My suggestion is that he takes his feeling of defeat and discuss it with his boss Zaev, who is driving the country into an abyss for three years. Is there a greater admission of defeat than such a statement coming from a man who this Government made President by stuffing ballots? If I were Pendarovski, I would resign, after admitting I was unable to use my position to change the reality on the ground. Instead, bot the President and the Prime Minister are telling us here, at home, that they brought life to the country, while as soon as they cross the border, they say that it’s all gone to the dogs and we should all move out. We know thins are bad, but they are the ones who are making it worse, Mickoski told he Kurir news site in an interview.

Mickoski says that the focus on the coming VMRO-DPMNE led administration will be to bring jobs to Macedonia that will allow the young to remain here and to start the renewal of the country. He blames the outgoing Prime Minister Zoran Zaev of putting in place a budget that will not help spur growth and development, but is merely there to bribe voters ahead of the elections in April 2020.