The opposition VMRO-DPMNE party called on Zoran Zaev to give up on his latest plan to postpone the general elections that were planned for April 2020. Zaev, whose SDSM party is trailing VMRO in the polls, initially tried to postpone the elections citing the need to wait for Spain to ratify Macedonia’s NATO accession, and now demands that the Parliament approves a set of proposals hiking public sector wages and retirement incomes to cushion the expected blow in the elections.

The elections will take place. All major political parties agreed that we have elections during our meeting at President Pendarovski’s residence, and there is no getting away from this. Zaev had three years to adopt all the laws he wanted and he said would benefit Macedonia. None of his steps helped the country. With all that in mind, it makes sense that he will try to flee from the elections, but we will not allow him. The elections will take place on April 12th, said VMRO-DPMNE Secretary General Igor Janusev.

VMRO member of Parliament Ilija Dimovski also said that we should now expect a flood of new excuses from Zaev why the elections need to be postponed.

He kept trying to confuse the Parliament and even his coalition partners. I suppose he saw the latest polls and realized the extremely steep downward trend of his party, Dimovski said.

Regarding Zaev’s complaints that the Parliament is not moving fast enough to pass his agenda, Dimovski said that the ruling party is blocking the Parliament by pushing hundreds of laws through in the last minute – as many as it adopted through the rest of the term of the Parliament. Dimovski said that the opposition will continue to insist to have at least minimum opportunity to speak its peace on the proposed laws, and that VMRO will also demand a Parliament session on the dramatic air pollution problem.

We had the National Security Council convene on the air pollution issue, but we can’t spare a session of Parliament? All the while we receive dozens upon dozens of bills whose only purpose is to land SDSM activists in various public sector commissions or offices, and the Parliament is expected to continue discussing those bills, Dimovski replied to Zaev’s objections.