SDSM Claims Bitola Has 90 Million Denars in Overdue Debts After Five Years of Konjanovski: The Numbers Are Serious, the Documents Are Missing

The Municipality of Bitola has around 90 million denars in overdue liabilities and roughly another 40 million not yet due, while the debt of the municipal public enterprises exceeds 120 million denars. That is the claim of Zoran Stojchevski, head of SDSM's municipal branch, who told a press conference that under Mayor Toni Konjanovski and VMRO-DPMNE the city has spent five years going backwards instead of forward.

The list of complaints is long. According to SDSM, the municipality went from an inherited positive balance to debt, some schools at one point faced having their electricity cut off, and the city has illegal dumps, unmown green areas and overflowing bins. The bed of the Dragor river, they say, is overgrown and neglected, even though the prices of communal services have gone up.

The criticism extends to infrastructure. Of the promised roundabouts, SDSM calls the two in Srelishte and Gorno Orizari improvisation, and the one by the old veterinary station non-functional and dug up several times. The new boulevard entrance from the Ohrid side and the multifunctional sports complex, according to the opposition, simply do not exist. The package also included FK Pelister, which was relegated to the Second League, while the stadium, they claim, hosts concerts more often than football.

The debt figures are serious and, if accurate, the people of Bitola have every right to know how the city got there. But the statement cites no documents on which the liabilities were calculated, and there is no response from the municipality or from Konjanovski. An opposition demanding accountability should show its own accounts, and a government claiming it is doing well should publish its own. Until both sides put the numbers on the table, citizens will have to judge for themselves how much of this is accounting and how much is party rhetoric.