During his visit to the municipality of Prilep as part of the “It is important!” campaign, Hristijan Mickoski, the president of VMRO-DPMNE, responded to a journalist’s question about communication with the government and progress on setting a date for elections, specifically whether they should be combined (both presidential and parliamentary) to save costs. He explained that there has been communication with SDSM within the parliament concerning the OSCE/ODIHR recommendations on the electoral code.

“As for our communication with SDSM, we have had meetings within the parliament to discuss the technical recommendations and changes in the electoral code, which are part of the OSCE/ODIHR recommendations. This should be completed as soon as possible because we are already running late; we are now six months away from the elections. I anticipate that there will be significant progress on this topic next week. We also expect a specific election date to be defined. VMRO-DPMNE’s stance is crystal clear: elections should be held together to avoid unnecessary expenditure, as we must not squander the hard-earned money of the people. If someone tries to complicate matters and burden the citizens with additional costs using primitive political reasoning and combinations, that’s their problem. However, the public opinion, the citizens’ opinion, and VMRO-DPMNE’s stance are unequivocal: both presidential and parliamentary elections should be conducted at a single expense in just a few months from today,” emphasized Mickoski.