Levica: March 16 remains an open wound as Hristijan Mickoski raises glasses in Kochani wearing a white shirt

Levica said the memory of March 16 still sends shivers through the country: parents measure life before and after that date, young people carry memories they should never have had, and entire families face empty places at holiday tables. While the nation continues to learn how to live with March 16, Hristijan Mickoski put on a white shirt and traveled to Kochani to mark a birthday and the 26th anniversary of VMRO‑DPMNE's municipal committee, the party said.

The statement accused the VMRO‑DPMNE leadership of displaying “tasteless” and insensitive behaviour by staging partisan celebrations so close to a date that many Macedonians still mourn. Levica said such scenes reveal a disconnection from the social reality that followed March 16.

Levica: a failure of moral sense, not just politics

According to the left‑wing party, what took place in Kochani illustrates a phase of blinded political arrogance, where applause drowns out the silence that should be respected on that anniversary. They argued that no public official or party member intervened to stop the celebration, which normalised preparing a white shirt, arranging glasses and calling the photographer.

Levica quoted the absent internal warning that, they said, nobody voiced: "people, this is wrong, inappropriate, let's not overdo it, we can skip it." The party used that formulation to illustrate how, in their view, the internal compass inside VMRO‑DPMNE has been lost.

They said Kochani is a place where any political power should enter with a sense of responsibility, not partisan euphoria, and concluded that the party's failure to recognise the impropriety shows a deeper moral defect rather than a mere political error.

Photo: press material from the event