North Macedonia’s biggest parties pick their leaders

Hristijan Mickoski was re-elected as the leader of the biggest opposition party, VMRO-DPMNE, with 489 votes in favour and three invalid ballots. At the same time, SDSM, the country’s biggest governing party from which former prime minister Zoran Zaev resigned, held elections to pick their new leader and expected prime minister.

After the vote, Mickoski said that “an era of mobilisation begins in which we will reach out to all free-thinking citizens and ask them to join us in renewing our country.” He also sent out a call to the ethnic minorities in the country for a New Deal, a new “concept of togetherness” that will lead to a societal consensus.

The new leader also painted a dire picture of a country where citizens are discouraged from becoming politically engaged because of the daily dose of humiliation and insults they are subjected to under Zaev’s regime and called for early elections.

The vote in SDSM comes after Zaev resigned after he was defeated in the runoff elections of 31 October, and mainly because VMRO-DPMNE won in the capital, Skopje.

SDSM elected a leader on the formula “one member, one vote” and over 60,000 party members were eligible to vote for a new party leader, expected new Prime Minister.

As expected, the candidate that Zaev endorsed, Deputy Finance Minister Dimitar Kovačevski, won with almost 80% of the votes.

(Željko Trkanjec | EURACTIV.hr)