Stevo Pendarovski’s elections comes with serious debts and political mortgages attached and we are all going to pay for it, said VMRO-DPMNE’s Antonio Milososki, while congratulating Pendarovski on his inauguration. Pendarovski lost the competitive vote among the largely ethnic Macedonian districts, but was able to overturn the result with the help of near unanimous vote in his favor in the majority Albanian districts, and Milososki was alluding to the deal he made with the Albanian parties from the coalition and the opposition.

He got a line of political credit from politicians and parties, and they will expect to have it repaid. Pendarovski will not be the one to pay the debt back, it will be the politician who he agrees with 102.5 percent, as he once said, Milososki said, referring to Prime Minister Zoran Zaev.

Some of the coming changes were already visible in Pendarovski’s inauguration. He received a bilingual certificate from the State Electoral Commission – in Albanian and Macedonian, instead of the Macedonian only certificates of the past. The inauguration ceremony was led by Speaker Talat Xhaferi who spoke in Albanian throughout the event. But numerous other concessions in the public spending, lawmaking and judiciary, public sector hiring, will probably never be fully publicly known.

Fadil Zendeli from the opposition Albanian party BESA was quick to remind Pendarovski of the debt he owes.

We expect the new President to do what he promised during the elections and what he said he would do, Zendeli said. BESA did not endorse Pendarovski, but the voter break-down makes it clear that at least some of its supporters, who voted for Blerim Reka in the first round of the vote, switched to Pendarovski in the second, and nearly none voted for the VMRO candidate Gordana Siljanovska – Davkova.

Artan Grubi from the ruling coalition Albanian party DUI was asked about Milososki’s prediction that Pendarovski and SDSM will pay for the Albanian support by yet another round of concessions with the Macedonian national interests.

Pendarovski is our candidate and we believe that we were the decisive factor in his win. There is no need for us to submit additional invoices for our candidate. The biggest invoice we collected on was that a consensual candidate was elected President, Grubi said, speaking about the DUI request that the party has a final say in the choice of the presidential candidate.