An argument is brewing in the newly created ethnic Albanian wing of the SDSM party, as the Kumanovo branch is protesting against some of Zaev’s other Albanian supporters, especially the controversial Zahir Bekiri – Caush.

Zaev owes his position to the Albanian votes SDSM won in the 2016 elections, as well as to the subsequent coalition with the Albanian DUI party. But, given that SDSM has never head a home-grown Albanian wing, there are several people pretending to lead this new organization.

One of them, Hadi Osmani who leads the Albanian SDSM branch in Kumanovo, openly rebuked Zaev for being too close to people like the Caush, who was famously arrested in 2015 for forging materials to be used by Zaev in political propaganda campaigns and for possessing some of Zaev’s wiretaps he was reportedly using for blackmail.

If somebody speaks for the Albanians in SDSM that is me. It can’t be somebody who I brought to the party, because they wanted to have their picture taken with Zaev. We need to respect the hierarchy and the established order, Osmani wrote to the Caush in a Facebook post.

Caush replied both to Osmani but also to the several other Albanian leaders in the party, such as Muhamed Zekiri and Edmond Ademi.

You had 14 votes in your village. You and Zekiri both weigh 20 grams. Me and my friends are 100 times heavier than your entire group, Ademi included. So be quiet, don’t make me humiliate you, Caush wrote back.