"Macedonia needs a strong opposition," Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said in a TV interview from New York. Right after that, he explained, party by party, why in his view no such opposition exists at the moment.

The 12:05 platform

First up was "Conversations about the Future at 12:05," the group inside the opposition Social Democrats (SDSM) pushing to replace leader Venko Filipche. Mickoski criticized them for claiming that citizens voted for his VMRO-DPMNE because they had no other choice. "I regret that even this alternative, which presents itself as an alternative within the opposition, once again underestimates the people and insults them by making them out to be short-sighted," he said. And he concluded: "In life and in politics, you don't get a second chance at a first impression."

Mickoski was actually responding to a reporter's question about Filipche's claim that members of the platform are paid by the government and work for the prime minister. On that part, his answer was that these are SDSM's "internal affairs," which he doesn't want to interfere in.

DUI, Levica and the "scandals"

Of the opposition coalition led by the ethnic Albanian party DUI, he said they are "old, worn-out structures" whose performance we've known for more than 20 years. Of the left-wing Levica, he said that in the two City of Skopje institutions where it had a chance to show something, it left "a pale impression or none at all," and that there's a group of "ten, 15, 20 people" there, happy with their annual funding, who "go to the seaside at our southern neighbor three or four times." Of the SDSM leadership, he said it "makes up stories" on a daily basis and brands them as scandals, "big, small, medium."

The prime minister as opposition analyst

It's striking how much time the prime minister devotes to parties that, by his own account, aren't serious enough to be an alternative. When the government hands out grades to the opposition and tells it what it should look like, it's worth asking: is the strong opposition Mickoski wants one that will criticize the government, or one the prime minister will like?

A strong opposition, by definition, doesn't wait for a grade from the prime minister.