Prime Minister Zoran Zaev sent perhaps the most stern message he has ever sent to his former party leader and former president Branko Crvenkovski.

During Friday’s interview with TV Kanal 5, he said that he wished the country had a former president like Stipe Mesic, who, as is well known, comments on important social developments in Croatia, unlike Crvenkovski, and said that his membership in SDSM has long been frozen. Although he said that his position after the BGNES interview was a democratic right, Zaev commented that he was surprised by Crvenkovski’s address to the Social Democrats, pointing out that he should have addressed the citizens.

I wish we had former presidents and prime ministers who would be active actors in society, Zaev said.

Asked if he had talked to Branko Crvenkovski after his statement with serious criticism, Zaev said that he hadn’t, but that his party reacted with a statement that he had seen before, coordinated and released it to the public.