At Thursday’s Q&A session of Parliament, PM and VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski said he and party officials, during their time in opposition, had been followed by security services, adding that political potentates had misused institutions.
“Due to the sensitivity, I will not go into detail. However, what I can say is that one institution engaged in physically following an opposition party leader. They would make up a source named “Cilindar” [“Cylinder”] that, according to them, submits allegedly credible information. This was going on at the start of 2020, during an election period. I was being followed under the pretext that a parapolice military armed formation comprising Macedonian radical extreme citizens would make threats in the pre-election period to secure support for VMRO-DPMNE and that Professor Hristijan Mickoski, PhD, was the one ordering this, that I was the one that funded and had formed this formation.
This has been left as a trace, this was used as cover in order for all of us to be covered. The same source, “Cilindar” [“Cylinder”], said I had been spotted with two females hiking on Vodno and that they’d presented to me information that was in my interest. Both pieces of information are false. Also, prior to the local elections in 2021, the source is “Dzoker” [“Joker”], who said I had had meetings at the Bigorski Monastery with members of this patriotic society in order for us to violate the security of Macedonia”, the PM stated, in an answer to a question from VMRO-DPMNE MP Jovan Jauleski.
Mickoski ironically asked whether those were the EU values the previous cabinet had cited. Also, he stressed that his wife and two sons were physically covered as well, adding that the reform of services would put an end to such activities and that everyone involved, as long as he headed the cabinet, would be held liable.
NSDP MP Goran Misovski didn’t get a concrete answer from the PM as to whether there was a deal for DUI to join the ruling structure.
“The impression is that when an unpleasant situation happens to you with VLEN, you announce destabilisation with your joker being that, ‘There, DUI’s about to start a war any moment now.’ This looks to me like the time when VMRO[-DPMNE] and DUI would engage in such games to increase the rating. The same thing is going on now”, he also stated.
In response, Mickoski said that everything Misovski said had not been true.
“Misovski, feel safe, I hope that after so many years as an MP, you will have a great feast and enjoy while being safe because the security situation is stable”, the PM stressed.
In response, the MP said the PM had indirectly confirmed that there was a scenario to fabricate destabilisation. Regarding the initiatives challenging the Law on Languages and accusations from DUI MPs that he was pressuring the Constitutional Court, the PM said though Ali Ahmeti’s party would be trying to raise monoethnic topics and try to cause a monoethnic conflict, they would fail in that.