BESA party leader and Tetovo Mayor Bilal Kasami, who is one of the leaders of the newly formed Albanian opposition coalition with the Alternative and the Democratic Movement, called for changes to the national anthem, to include the Albanians.

So long as the anthem evokes the Macedonians as an ethnic group and relates to them, the Albanians won’t feel comfortable with it. In order for the Albanians to feel the anthem as their own, they need to be part of it. Not just the anthem, all symbols should reflect the reality. Take the flag, it is neutral toward the ethnic groups, but given the process in which it was adopted, under pressure from Greece, there is resistance among the ethnic groups in using it. If we are all to respect the national symbols, they need to reflect the multi-ethnic character of the country, Kasami said. He asked that, as long as municipal institutions are called to perform the national anthem, then the Albanian majority municipalities should use the national anthem of Albania.