Sveti Nikole, 17 April 2024 (MIA) — We have our backs to the wall in these elections; you deserve a government in accordance with your dignity, a government you will not be afraid or ashamed of, but proud of, VMRO-DPMNE's presidential candidate Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova told a Sveti Nikole election rally.

Siljanovska-Davkova spoke about her opponent Stevo Pendarovski and what he had said in 2019 about the country's EU membership and the Friendship Treaty with Bulgaria.

"Everything he claimed that would happen soon [...] didn't. Not only did we not take a step forward, we took a step back," she said, adding that the country was now "negotiating with our neighbor to start negotiations; an unprecendented phenomenon."

"New people should come to power and we should be guided by our state and national interests," she said.

Giving her his support, VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski at the Sveti Nikole rally said "VMRO-DPMNE and the coalition feel they have the trust." He also said they needed "a historic result" so they could "transform Macedonia."

"And those DUI people at their rallies often accuse me of being anti-Albanian, of being a xenophobe. Then I ask them: Since when has there been a rule relating crime to ethnicity?"

Mickoski said that if DUI members were attacked for committing crimes "and robbing the people of Macedonia," that was not because of their ethnicity. "Criminals have no ethnicity. Either you are a criminal or you are not," he said. mr/