A week until the end of the campaign, the candidates for mayor of Skopje had their second debate, after which the people of Skopje, if they have not decided yet, now have to decide why they need change. Because on the one hand we saw a desire for work, concept and ideas, and on the other hand powerlessness of the current mayor Petre Silegov, old and unfulfilled promises for the city of Skopje.

According to the polls, the independent candidate supported by VMRO-DPMNE, Danela Arsovska, and the current mayor and candidate of SDSM, Petre Silegov, have the best chances to go to the second round.

Their offer to the citizens of Skopje at the last debate in “360 degrees”, regarding the topics that were discussed, included air pollution, traffic, urban chaos, “Vecer” analyzes.

Although Skopje is full of garbage, illegal landfills in many places, and the air is too polluted and Skopje often tops the list of most polluted cities in the world, according to Silegov it does not exist. What he claimed in the debate is that there are no illegal landfills and no air pollution.

Unlike him, Danela Arsovska, instead of turning a blind eye to the problem, offers solutions. Thus, Arsovska talked about an exact number of days, ie exactly 82 days needed to clean the illegal landfills, and in the terms of reducing air pollution she spoke about 250 ecological buses, as opposed to those only 35 of Silegov. But above all, she he program also offers free public transport incentives for citizens to reduce car use.

Regarding the traffic chaos, what could be heard from Silegov is the same as in the last elections, promises that were not fulfilled, but according to him, they are working on it, the chaos is being resolved.

Since Silegov failed to fulfill the promises, but also to complete the projects left to him by Koce Trajanovski, he again promises a new fast public transport, tunnels and boulevards like “Boris Trajkovski” which he has not been able to do for 4 years. 

And while Silegov makes the same promises he made 4 years ago and failed to fulfill, and the people of Skopje are still suffering from the chaos, Arsovska presented concrete solutions that Silegov did not even know could be done.

What Arsovska offered in the debate are 5 boulevards, which will create an internal ring road to solve the chaos, but also the final completion of the projects that Koce Trajanovski left to Silegov.

Silegov’s unpreparedness did not end here either, so the unemployment came up again and 4 sleepy years. Regarding the urban plan, Silegov, who promised a solution during his term, all he could say after 4 years is that the procedures are underway, although even one year wait is too much.

Unlike Silegov, Skopje residents can expect insights from Arsovska, so that it does not happen to them that a building emerges under their window tomorrow.

Which means that in the whole debate we could see old promises and turning a blind eye to the problems that have not been solved in the past 4 years, and on the other hand someone who has proven to represent 24,000 companies and has a desire to really solve the problems, and has a concrete plan for that.