Zoran Zaev is holding a meeting of his coalition partners in the Government and, like after the defeat in the first round of the local elections, he is getting them to publicly pledge loyalty to his coalition. Zaev announced that he is resigning as Prime Minister and SDSM party leader after he lost badly in the second round of the elections, but he also wants the SDSM led coalition to survive, probably against a handpicked new Prime Minister.

The LDP and DOM parties, who ran a separate local elections campaign, apart from Zaev, which hurt his SDSM party somewhat, said that they will remain in the coalition. DOM party leader Maja Moracanin insisted that their local election campaign ran under the slogan “Determined for change” meant only changes at the local level, and not in the central Government.

Even before the campaign we said that the majority in Parliamnet is stable and that we don’t support forming a new majority.  Macedonia needs stability in light of the energy crisis and the Covid pandemic. We expet to hear what the vision of the new Prime Minister and Government will be, Moracanin said. DOM and LDP hold three seats in Parliament and could bring down the Zaev Government by themselves. VMRO-DPMNE President Hristijan Mickoski called them out in his victory speech on Sunday evening, as well as BESA, another key partner of Zaev that could also bring down the Government if it defects.

Tito Petkovski from the NSDP party – which was formed for the purpose of toppling an SDSM Government in 2006 and now has two

seats in Parliament – also gave his initial vote of confidence to Zaev. “You can’t redo all elections if you lose one election. We stand by the majority in Parliament. We are now talking what comes after the Prime Minister resigns, because the Government resigns with him and we need to determine how the procedure will go forward”, Petkovski said.

Menduh Thaci from the DPA party also expressed his support for maintaining the majority. Thaci has one seat in Parliament.