On Monday evening, as Macedonia registered record 21 Covid-19 deaths, the country’s official clown and Health Minister Venko Filipce thought it’s a good time to tweet out a bizarre, politicized video.
It tries to lay the blame for the epidemic on opposition officials, posting several instances when they were not wearing masks, intermingled with mocking images of Jim Carrey, Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys and parrots.
After public outrage, Filipce deleted the video, then posted it again before finally deleting it. It was preserved by other Twitter users.
Filipce has been facing strong criticism from the opposition VMRO-DPMNE party, which has pointed out to the numerous corruption and racketeering scandals revolving around him and his open politization of the crisis – SDSM was portraying the epidemic as over in June, when the party desperately wanted to hold low turnout elections, only to see it explode in the coming months.
Recently, Filipce showed that he can’t handle the criticism and despite his highly responsible office, he entered into the political fray, first by sharing a picture of VMRO-DPMNE supporters without masks, and then accusing opposition representatives for not wearing masks in Parliament – even as he himself was not wearing one.
The fact that many SDSM officials and activists were also violating the mask mandate was never raised by Filipce.
