English
SDSM leader Venko Filipce is facing pressure from all sides after the disastrous local elections in which his party won only six mayoral seats (only one in a major urban area – Centar). Filipce responded by insisting that SDSM is still the largest opposition party (although it trails the coalition partner VLEN by the number of seats it won and is about even with DUI in the number of votes it got in the municipal council races).
First to leave was Gjorgji Galetanovski, head of the SDSM branch in Centar, who didn’t even wait for the second round of the elections. Days ahead of the second round, it was announced that one of the Vice Presidents of SDSM, Ana Cupeska, has also resigned. The Skopje Law University professor was widely ridiculed for her public appearances in which she came off as clueless, discussed her passion for hypnosis and her crush on Elon Musk.
The outgoing Mayor of Strumica Kostadin Kostadinov, where SDSM suffered one of their worst defeats, congratulated to VMRO-DPMNE on its victory and called for serious changes in the party – seen as thinly veiled appeal that Filipce must go as leader.
I do not agree that SDSM is a fully extinguished party. On the contrary, SDSM must go through serious filtration, reforms and rebranding, that will allow us to remain the second strongest party in Macedonia. Our focus should not be to quickly remove this Government, but to strengthen SDSM in its opposition role, to make it open to all, a platform where many smaller groups can find themselves in, Kostadinov said. He was denied the chance to run for re-election by Filipce, which surprised many since both are part of the inner circle of former leader Zoran Zaev, and this granted an easy victory to VMRO in the mayoral race.
A group of SDSM activists from Bitola, where the party was reduced to third in the elections, behind VMRO and an independent list, called on Filipce to quickly remove the leadership of the local branch of the party. Zoran Stojcevski, who is a Bitola member in the SDSM Central Committee, said that their mayoral candidate Metodija Kunovski must resign as local party leader, after his dismal showing in the mayoral race. “Kunovski knows little about the party structure here, and his decision to run for Mayor was a mistake since he does not represent all the factions. Venko Filipce needs to remove him, it was he who appointed him, not us, the party members”, said Stojcevski.
In Skopje’s Gjorce Petrov, the head of the local SDSM branch Kostadin Acevski resigned today and called on Filipce and all the party leadership to also resign. “Not just because of the poort results but because of the way SDSM operated in the past period”, Acevski said.
In his concession speech on Sunday evening, Filipce said that he has no intention to resign, but that there will be other changes in the party.
