After a series of earthquakes which have struck Skopje in the past several days, the President of the Steering Committee for Crisis Management, Nikola Todorov has yet to appear in public. The first meeting of the Steering Committee was held on September 11, right after the earthquake which measured 5.3 on the Richter scale, and the second meeting took place on September 12.
Even though after the first emergency meeting, an expected statement from Todorov was announced, but never happened. The public has become interested as to why he has not appeared in public after a series of earthquakes, especially after his continued presence in the affected areas during the flood crisis from August 6 this year.
After the earthquake, the President of the VMRO-DPMNE Nikola Gruevski, and President of the SDSM Zoran Zaev, have also not been seen in public, plus there has been a notable absence of otherwise often media-present Mayor Koce Trajanovski, Prime Minister Emil Dimitriev and Stevco Jakimovski.
Experts from this field justify the absence of political figures and have said that during the floods there was a greater opportunity for political marketing. Analyst Peter Arsovski said that now, after the earthquakes, there hasn’t been a great opportunity for photo sessions.
“During the floods, there were casualties and victims. It was an opportunity for photos and self-promoting politicians. Now the possibility for political marketing is less, there is no place to photograph, therefore, diminishing their interest in appearing in public”, says Arsovski.
After floods in Skopje on August 6, the President of the ruling VMRO-DPMNE party Nikola Gruevski, interrupted his summer vacation in Turkey, as was widely reported by the media, “to help deal with the serious consequences of the storms” and to “inspect the consequences”.
After the strong earthquake on Sunday, Gruevski first appeared in public yesterday, at the literary promotion of 13 new titles of the project, “Translation of specialized scientific books and textbooks”.
