The leaders’ meeting with President Stevo Pendarovski will be held on May 12, announced the leader of VMRO-DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski during Tuesday’s interview with TV 24. He maintains the position that now is not the time for elections, but for dealing with the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic in both health and economic terms, although, as he says, there is no doubt that whenever the elections are held, VMRO-DPMNE will win.

I have no doubt that whenever the elections take place, VMRO-DPMNE will defeat SDSM. It will be convincingly defeated and I have no dilemma here, neither as a person nor as a leader, with a margin of at least a double-digit number of MPs, said Mickoski.

Elections should not be held now, says the leader of VMRO-DPMNE, because now we are in the midst of a pandemic, in which newly diagnosed patients and deaths are counted on a daily basis. It is wrong, he emphasized, to count infections and possibly deaths amid election campaign.

Additionally, according to Mickoski, the problem is how the election day will take place, ie which could be a risk for a repeated rise in infections. The party leader also said that elections could not be held with a programme made in January, when there was no pandemic.

The programme was developed for the April elections, but economic trends have now changed and we need a new programme incorporating new capital projects, investments, notes Mickoski.

He says the elections could take place in mid-July at the earliest, since the State Election Commission needs 50-60 days to prepare for the polls even if the state of emergency is not extended beyond May 16.

Mickoski expects the leaders’ meeting to focus primarily on the current developments related to the health and economic crisis, without excluding the issue of elections.

VMRO-DPMNE remains on its position that reconvening the Parliament would be unconstitutional, because “MPs have returned their mandate to the citizens”.