VMRO-DPMNE President Hristijan Mickoski said that the legitimacy of the former Parliament was spent when it voted to dissolve itself in mid February, and that it is not acceptable to have it recalled, as the ruling SDSM party is trying to do.

That Parliament returned its legitimacy back to the citizens. Only the people can again elect a Parliament. Zoran Zaev can’t violate the Constitution, Mickoski said.

Macedonia has a crisis of legitimacy in the Government as the Parliament is dissolved, and the Government meant to be interim rules by executive fiat, given to it by President Stevo Pendarovski who himself acknowledged that the extension of the state of emergency he ordered is in violation of the Constitution. VMRO-DPMNE is calling for a meeting of party leaders to determine what can be done to correct this situation. Mickoski today ruled out holding quick elections, before the epidemic has been put under control, as SDSM seems to be trying to do.

VMRO-DPMNE is prepared to beat SDSM at any moment. But holding early general elections while we have the Covid-19 pandemic and we are fighting each day to reduce the number of infected citizens and victims, when we have an economic, sanitary and educational crisis, is not a priority. We first must fight to protect the health of our citizens, put economy back on the winning track, and only then can we talk about elections, Mickoski said when asked about the possibility that SDSM pushed for elections in June or July.

Mickoski accused SDSM of putting in place a plan to steal the elections that were supposed to take place on April 12, by front-loading much of the annual spending planned in the budget. This is now causing dramatic deficits, Mickoski says, as the economy tanked at a time when the Government was over-spending. SDSM activists are even distributing food through poorneighborhoods across Macedonia, in violation of the coronavirus rules, which was apparently planned as pre-election bribery.