Two months after losing badly in the Skopje mayoral race, former Mayor Petre Silegov tried to come back to the political arena with a comment aimed at Mayor Danela Arsovska. Yesterday evening Silegov shared the current air pollution level – typically high in a winter evening – with the comment “Go green…”. It’s a clear attack on Arsovska as the air quality in Skopje dropped after several weeks of relatively good results due to the constant wind clearing up the smog.

At the same time, Silegov’s former chief of staff and SDSM party PR activist Nikola Naumoski shared a graph insisting that the air quality under Silegov was improved with the concentration of harmful particles falling by about 20 percent, insisting it’s the result of unspecified policies put in place by Silegov.

The key way to fight pollution in the city, initiated before Silegov, is to promote the use of inverter air conditioners that run on electricity for heating, instead of the wood and coal fired furnaces that are used in many individual homes. This policy is about to backfire badly as Macedonia is left almost without cheap domestic electricity production and is forced to turn to extremely expensive imports, that will devastate families using electricity for heating.

In the short time she’s been in office, Arsovska initiated a push to clean up the illegal dump sites across the city. These are often set on fire and their smog adds to the pollution, especially as it is mixed with burnt plastic. Ovearll, the key influence on the air quality is whether the winter ends up being windy and rainy, or dry and with little air circulation through the Skopje valley.