During the final presidential debate, outgoing President Stevo Pendarovski again expressed hope that he can overcome the huge first round advantage by the VMRO-DPMNE candidate Gordana Siljanovska – Davkova with the help of the Albanian votes. To this, Siljanovsk are responded that its citizens, not ethnic groups, who vote in the elections.

These elections were the first time we’ve had two ethnic Albanian candidates, appealing primarily to the ethnic Albanian voters, and five other candidates. I have said it then and I say it now that I’m the only candidate who strived to win votes from all ethnic communities. I did so in 2019, and back in 2014 in my first failed attempt, when I had a significant number of Albanian votes and votes from other ethnic communities. So I’m not a purely ethnic cnadidate. There are about 330,000 votes from the candidates who did not make it to the second round, and according to my estimates of the ideological and political profiles of the voters, I think and I’m certain that the majority of them are closer to my concepts about what kind of Macedonia we all want, Pendarovski said.

Think that in the elections it is not the ethnic communities that vote, but it is the citizens. And a candidate who says he is the repesentative of the citizens should defent this civic concept. That is my response, Siljanovska said.