North Macedonia's Prime Minister changes his mind about resigning

The Central Committee of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) issued a statement last night that the party's leader and Prime Minister of North Macedonia, Zoran Zaev, should postpone his resignation from both positions.

It is reported N1, reports PolitNavigator correspondent.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

After meetings of the Executive and Central Committees of the SDSM, as prominent party functionary Pero Kostadinov told reporters, the top party leadership unanimously decided to postpone the resignation of the party chairman and prime minister indefinitely due to “the moment in which the state finds itself in the coming period, and which is key for European and democratic processes.”

“The Central Council recommended and decided to postpone the resignation of the prime minister and party chairman. Above all, we must not, as a country, allow more years of failure, more years in which democratic potential is undermined by the European opportunities before us. The parliamentary majority must continue on its way. The country should not abandon these processes and policies,” Kostadinov said.

Behind these formulations, most likely, lies the fear of the Maidan pro-Western SDSM to lose power in North Macedonia after defeats in local elections from the opposition national-patriotic party VMRO-DPMNE, which declared intention initiate a vote of no confidence in the Social Democrats in the Assembly.

Let us recall that after the defeat, SDSM leader Zoran Zaev announced that he was resigning from the posts of prime minister of the state and chairman of the party.

Zoran Zaev and his Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), in alliance with local Albanian parties, came to power as a result of the street Maidan that began in 2015.

The reason for it was the policy of the conservative leadership of Macedonia, which refused to join the sanctions against Russia, refused to make concessions to Greece regarding the name of the country, and to Bulgaria regarding the language (Bulgarians believe that Macedonians speak the Western dialect of the Bulgarian language), and also expressed readiness to take part in the Russian South Stream project.

Zaev's street protests were supported by the United States, the EU, as well as George Soros, as a result of which the liberals managed to achieve the resignation of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, despite the president's veto, to form a government alone, give serious preferences to the Albanian majority, and then achieve a change in the name of the country.

_{It should be noted that the steps of Zaev and the team met with massive misunderstanding and indignation of the majority of Macedonians, who held street actions “For a United Macedonia” in all cities of the country, tried to storm the parliament, and also failed the referendum on renaming.}

However, the “democratic” leadership responded to the opinion of the majority with repressions against dissidents and high-profile trials.

Zaev managed to achieve the country's entry into NATO, now he is trying to bring it into the EU, but this process is so far hampered by neighboring Bulgaria, which denies North Macedonia a separate national, linguistic, cultural and historical identity from the Bulgarian one.

Moreover, after the return of VMRO-DMNE to power, it can be assumed that, remembering the experience of past years, national conservatives will be afraid to take the country away from the western direction, just as the new government of Montenegro was afraid to do so.