VMRO-DPMNE President Hristijan Mickoski said that he expects hard work from the candidates his party nominated to the interim Government and added that they will serve as guardians of the Constitution. Mickoski said that there are clear indications that as Prime Minister, Zoran Zaev abused the public administration for the benefit of his SDSM party and violated the laws, which the newly appointed interim ministers will reveal to the public.

I expect that the Government will now operate in accordance with the laws, and with respect for the Constitution of Macedonia. Expect hard work over these next 100 days, and after our victory on April 12th, we will push forward even stronger, Mickoski said in his first press conference following the resignation of Zoran Zaev as Prime Minister and the appointment of the interim Government meant to organize elections on April 12th. Mickoski’s press conference was widely anticipated, and the French Ambassador to Macedonia Christian Thimonier even held a Facebook watch party for the press conference.

Mickoski explained the absence of the VMRO nominated minister from the meeting with President Pendarovski with the fact that such meetings were not customary in the past, and said that the opposition appointed interim ministers were eager to get to work in their own departments.

The opposition leader said that VMRO still faced many disadvantages due to the total abuse of the public administration and the judiciary in favor of the SDSM party over the past years, including the criminal charges that were filed against the interim Deputy Agriculture Minister Cvetan Tripunovski.

We remain a party whose property is illegally frozen by the courts. But we are more than motivated to go to the pitch and defeat this rotten system, since the stake we are playing for is nothing less than Macedonia itself, Mickoski said.

Regarding the name issue, and the fact that the VMRO appointed government officials signed on documents using the name “North Macedonia”, Mickoski said that they never use the name in public but also can’t ignore the reality of the imposed name change.

This is the first step toward defeating this reality and in the future we will work hard to change it. We are not hypocrites, like some of the leading SDSM people, who were using the new adjective to the name for months, but today they post Facebook comments saying just Macedonia, Mickoski said.