As party leaders are about to hold a meeting next week to discuss a way out of the latest political crisis, VMRO-DPMNE officials say that they will request that any solution protects public health. The ruling SDSM party is pushing for early elections to be held as soon as possible, even as Macedonia is still fighting the coronavirus epidemic.

 In our analysis our starting point will be public health. That will determine when the elections should be held, VMRO officials briefed the press.

Meanwhile Stevco Jakimovski, from the GROM party, which is allied with VMRO, publicly accused SDSM that the reason they’re pushing for early elections before it is safe is their desire to reduce their margin of defeat. He also pointed to other violations and abuses by the ruling SDSM party that would make the elections illegitimate.

Zaev wants elections within 30 days or even sooner. He wants the preparations for elections to resume from where they left off when the epidemic struck, with the same voter rolls. That’s not possible, there are 18 year olds who got of age in the meantime, there are people who changed their address. Under this schedule, the state of emergency will be lifted on May 16, and the campaign would begin just eight days later. Some 5.000 SDSM officials used the previous 60 days, while we were all in house arrest of sorts, to go out, campaign, organize, distribute aid to their voters. Is that the fair and democratic way SDSM holds elections?, Jakimovski said, adding that the main reason for this action are economic considerations.

– SDSM is worried that come autumn, the economic situation will be far worse and their losing margin will be far greater, Jakimovski said.