Doctor and political activist Ilir Luma believes that Zoran Zaev harmed himself badly with ethnic Albanian voters and parties with his decision today to accept the VMRO-DPMNE demand to postpone the census for September. Albanian parties were hoping to hold a “corona census” with depressed turnout at home and massive online registration of the ethnic Albanian diaspora, that would inflate their share of the population, and Zaev initially played along, before changing his mind just days before the census was about to start.

With this move, Mickoski takes the advantage over Zaev. He will do all it takes to force Zaev to allow early general elections, which will certainly take place along with the municipal elections in October. I expect that Zaev will be badly defeated, Luma said.