During the rally in Tetovo, where he supported the nomination of Teuta Arifi for another term as Mayor – despite her mismanagement of the city that is often left without water and drowns in garbage – Zoran Zaev showed where his main pre-election problem lies. He frequently railed against the recently formed coalition between VMRO-DPMNE and the Albanian opposition parties AA and Alternative, which undercuts in Zaev’s and DUI’s near-monopoly of the Albanian vote during past election cycles. He insisted that the marriage between VMRO-DPMNE and the two Albanian parties is “doomed to divorce” and claimed that the voters of the two parties will not mutually support each other, blaming them of nationalism.
At the same time, his SDSM party engaged in fake news that incited inter-ethnic hatred, trying to undermine the opposition coalition. News outlets close to DUI and SDSM edited a video from 2016, in which a VMRO candidate participated, and replaced the original audio with a nationalist song that makes disparaging comments about the Albanians. The goal of this fake news attack was clearly to disrupt the cooperation between the opposition parties, but it also lead to spreading of a hateful song in the public – on false pretense.
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