In a TV interview on Wednesday evening, VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski rejected the possibility that the opposition party will boycott the presidential elections in an attempt to have them declared invalid and spark early general elections. Mickoski expressed his confidence that the VMRO nominee professor Gordana Siljanovska will be the next Macedonian President.

I’m a winner by nature, our presidential candidate is a winner, and together we will win. Macedoinia will have its first woman President, said Mickoski.

Interviewed by the notoriously pro-SDSM and conspiratorial journalist Saso Ordanoski, Mickoski denied his claims that the opposition will boycott, and said that it is more likely the ruling coalition will sabotage the elections. The ruling SDSM and DUI parties yesterday announced they will have a joint presidential candidate, but haven’t revealed the name yet.

Once SDSM and DUI see the results in the first round of the election, they are the ones who may boycott. But, if you are asking me whether we will tolerate a type of voting of the kind we had during the referendum, when voters allegedly beat the 100 meters record and voted every 2.4 seconds and turnout levels surpassed 100 percent – we won’t tolerate that, Mickoski said.

He is referring to the late evening turnout in the failed September 30th 2018 referendum to rename Macedonia, when in a number of majority ethnic Albanian districts, turnouts which hovered around 20 – 30 percent after 11 hours of voting, suddenly spiked to over 90 percent in the last hour, indicating serious levels of ballot stuffing.