English
SDSM is in turmoil after a group of former high level party officials, including a sitting member of Parliament, held a private meeting discussing the future of the party. The meeting was seen as open rebuke of leader Venko Filipce and the Zaev faction he belongs to, with tacit endorsement from former top party officials such as Branko Crvenovski, Radmila Sekerinska and Stevo Pendarovski.
The meeting titled “conversations about the future” was held earlier this week in a hotel in Skopje under the Chattam house rules. The moderator was Crvenovski’s former chief of staff Igor Ivanovski – Shema and it included former Defense Minister and current SDSM member of Parliament Slavjanka Petrovska, as well as other party officials often critical of Filipce and sidelined by his team. Monika Zajkova, leader of the Liberal-Democratic Party and also a member of Parliament elected through the SDSM led list, was also present.
With every passing day you are pushing people further toward creating a new party. Whether deliberately or not, this is dividing the opposition even further, said Vasko Kicevski, a party official close to Filipce’s predecessor as SDSM leader and former Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski. Some of the participants in this meeting, as well as officials involved in a Skopje faction that already broke with Filipce, are seen as close to former party leader Sekerinska, who currently occupies a high profile post as Deputy Secretary General of NATO. Former President Pendarovski has also made comments critical of Filipce and the Zaev faction which he never sat too comfortably with.
SDSM reacted with vitriol aimed toward Petar Arsovski, a political strategist close to the party, accusing him of being a “sellout”. “They are betraying the party and directly serving Mickoski to weaken the opposition block. The same happened with the ZNAM project and now with these new attempts for ‘platforms’ and ‘new beginnings’ which in reality can only mean division of the opposition from within”, SDSM said in a statement. SDSM is also attacking journalist Branko Geroski, another former political and media supporter of the party, who damaged the Zaev faction immensely with his reporting on the corruption of Zaev’s loyalist special prosecutor Katica Janeva.
Do they intend to dismiss me from the party? Or Slavjanka? I’ve been an SDSM party member since 1994 and I will remain one to the end of my life. A person who is not even associated with SDSM can’t do that to me. I want to send them a warning, to ask them to stop with these discreditations and the unhinged constructions they are hurling at people and their families, said Igor Ivanovski, calling SDSM out for its media campaign against the party officials who attended his meeting.