Michael Martens, Balkan correspondent for the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, responded with a tongue in cheek comment after SDSM – DUI presidential Stevo Pendarovski called him out for a critical article he published.

Several days ago Martens wrote an article outlining claims by Greek politicians that the votes to push the Prespa treaty through the Greek and the Macedonian Parliament were influenced by threats, blackmail and, especially on the Greek side, bribes with funds from both the Greek Foreign Ministry and foreign sources such as the George Soros network. The article did not insist that the claims are true, but for Pendarovski, who is used to adoring articles in the Western media encouraging SDSM to go to the end with the renaming and redefining of Macedonia, even this slight criticism was unacceptable and he began speculating about ulterior motives in Martens’ reporting.

It is a very respectable journalist from FAZ. I suppose you know he is a personal friend of Gruevski and I wouldn’t be surprised if the article was dictated to him from Budapest, Pendarovski said during a televised debate.

Martens quickly replied via Twitter.

Mr. Pendarovski is right, actually. Every morning at 9am, (on Sundays 9.30) Nikola calls to inflict his newest ideas on me which I then publish as my own. That is why I supported the name-deal so unequivocally. It was all dictated from Budapest.

Very few Western media outlets have raised questions about the Prespa treaty, its content or the way it was imposed on Macedonia. European Commissioner Johannes Hahn famously encouraged Zaev to use “Balkan tactics” to impose the name change, and Zaev gleefully obliged. Fewer media outlets still raised the issue of Zaev’s extensive track record of corruption and abuse of the judiciary to attack the opposition. But, on the face of it, even Pendarovski’s campaign has stopped denying that the votes to ram the treaty through the Macedonian Parliament were obtained through blackmail. Out of the nine opposition members of Parliament who gave Zoran Zaev the 81 votes he needed to amend the Constitution, three were of people who faced direct “terrorism” charges and sentences of well above 10 years in prison in a politically driven trial.  The charges were withdrawn after the three negotiated a selective amnesty law.

Out of the rest, one, Vladanka Avirovik, had the prison sentence which the Zaev led judiciary handed to her son withdrawn shortly after her vote. In her case it was obvious that the pressure is that her son will be sent to prison if she doesn’t vote for the name change. In the case of another, Zekir Ramcilovic, his political ally Sead Kocan had his sentence reduced after he voted “correctly”. Another, former Culture Minister Elizabeta Kanceska Milevska, was charged with corruption and it is widely expected that the charges against her will be dropped, or the case dragged out. Several of the prior, and at least one more of the remaining members of Parliament also got public sector jobs for their close relatives, apparently to sweeten the deal.

In the Greek Parliament, no over criminal charges against members of Parliament were reported, but many representatives from smaller parties who were long opposed to accepting a name treaty with Macedonia changed their minds as the day of the vote approached, which prompted widespread allegations of corruption.