Krushevo, 11 October 2025 (MIA) — VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski at a campaign rally in Krushevo ahead of the Oct. 19 local elections said VMRO-DPMNE's election platform and projects were realistic whereas SDSM offered empty promises and a smear campaign that would lead them to a huge debacle at the polls.

"We are campaigning on a clear and precise platform and our opponents are campaigning on demagogy and empty promises, with the same tricks and underground coalitions. Their smear campaign is their main offer in these elections," Mickoski said.

He said the smear campaign was orchestrated by "their real leader who arrived directly from Dubai" but it also included "their gramophone who writes articles exclusively in media close to SDSM, and who told me that he would tear me to pieces and called for my lynching, which in itself shows how much fear and hatred these people harbor inside."

He said SDSM was "so scared of the defeat that awaits them that in the campaign they also included the chief gossipmonger in the group, Stevo Pendarovski.”

Mickoski said "Pendarovski, the poor guy, publicly admitted he had been following and knew about the wiretapping." 

"In his speech, he described in detail half of my working day, things that have not been said anywhere and that only a person who received intelligence reports could know," he said. 

Mickoski said Pendarovski's aim was "to insert a worm of suspicion by revealing that people close to me had been telling on me." 

"And he asks me to publicly say who these people are. I don't know who these people are and whether they exist, but I know that in a country with a serious prosecution and the rule of law, this serious prosecution should call Stevo Pendarovski tomorrow and ask him to give a statement before a prosecutor about this crime he publicly admitted to and initiate proceedings for the unauthorized following of political opponents," Mickoski said.

According to Mickoski, his political opponents were fearing for their careers.

"They are afraid of losing their seats in their own party. And that fear is obvious in all of their appearances. And they are even more afraid of the day that will come when neither the prosecution nor this decimated judiciary, which Venko describes as professional, will be able to defend and protect them," he said.

"And there will be justice. And only like this will Macedonia be able to win," Mickoski said, urging voters to vote for VMRO-DPMNE on Oct. 19. mr/