The SDSM party is approaching the election campaign nervously and is lashing out against its political opponents, including with violence, said VMRO-DPMNE President Hristijan Mickoski in a video call with the OSCE Ambassador to Macedonia Clemens Koja. Mickoski pointed to the bomb attack against a shop owned by the family of VMRO Vice President Vladimir Misajlovski earlier this week, and the verbal assault on VMRO candidate Igor Durlovski by a former adviser of SDSM leader Zoran Zaev as example of the violent actions ordered by SDSM.

SDSM is clearly afraid of losing the elections and this is manifesting in violence, Mickoski said during the call.

The opposition leader also said that for VMRO, the main priority is to protect lives during the election campaign, which is greatly reduced and does not include mass public events. Mickoski pointed to the violations of election rules by SDSM that included starting the campaign early, in the midst of the Second Wave of the epidemic, and bribing voters in some of the worst affected parts of the country, again ignoring the social distancing restrictions and the ban on giving presents to citizens in exchange for their votes.