Every year, team of horsemen takes off from Skopje and rides for several days to Krusevo, to mark the Ilindem Uprising on August 2nd.

The event is typically supported by the VMRO-DPMNE party, which is considered heir to the VMRO organization, which started the uprising. For this, the DUI-SDSM government cut the public funding for this event.

But this year, SDSM decided to enact its own version of the ride. A group of its party officials took pictures riding horses around Krusevo today, calling or an honouring of the VMRO fighters.

The SDSM group was led by the party’s Secretary General Mile Zecevic. The former secret policy officer had recently amended his Serbian sounding last name to Zecevic – Vardarski, in an apparent attempt to expand his political appeal toward patriotic minded Macedonians – a group of voters that have completely abandoned SDSM during the years of national humiliations under this party.