English
Unrest continues to rise in SDSM, after party leader Venko Filipce announced that the team leading the party will remain largely unchanged from the one that suffered a tremendous loss in the local elections. First to publicly call Filipce out is former Skopje Mayor Petre Silegov, but now Fokus reports that former Interior Minister Oliver Spasovski is also among the rebels.
According to the outlet that is largely close to SDSM, Spasovski offered to resign as coordinator of the SDSM group in Parliament in a show of loyalty to Filipce, but is secretly preparing to challenge Filipce for the leadership. Their relationship broke, Fokus reports, over Filipce’s attempt to push a Parliament vote on a resolution on the dispute with Bulgaria just before the local elections. The highly unpopular proposals SDSM m
akes in the dispute – where the party blames Macedonia more than it blames Bulgaria – likely contributed to their electoral defeat.Filipce now portrays this issue as a “technical misunderstanding” and acknowledges that Spasovski reacted against the proposal. “We talked about it and Spasovski will remain as coordinator”, Filipce said. According to Fokus, Filipce used a meeting with Spasovski over this issue to ask him if he intends to challenge the leadership, but Spasovski said that if he intends to do something, he will do so publicly. The two informed former leader Zoran Zaev of their spat.
Fokus also reports that two former top party officials, Andrej Petrov and Igor Ivanovski – Shema, are preparing an initiative that would offer a political concept and personnel solutions within SDSM. Given the criticism from Petrov about the party’s posture, and Ivanovski’s close ties to former leader Branko Crvenkovski, this can be seen as a new challenge to Filipce’s authority.
