While votes from the second round of the local elections are still counted, the outcome is clear – VMRO-DPMNE and other opposition parties secured major gains, prompting Zoran Zaev to announce his resignation as Prime Minister and leader of the SDSM party. Zaev promised to resign after the shellacking of the first round, and he conditioned this with the outcome of the race in the capital Skopje. After an exceptionally ugly campaign on his part, his candidate in Skopje Petre Silegov lost to VMRO-DPMNE backed candidate Danela Arsovska, who will become the first woman – Mayor of Skopje.

I take responsibility for the bad results in these elections. I expect that the progressive forces will remain, will continue to fight, Zaev said before his dejected supporters, while levelling new rounds of accusations against the opposition.

Still, Zaev said that he intends to remain as Prime Minister “until we re-organize a new Government with a progressive majority that exists, and could grow in the future”. This indicates that Zaev will try to appoint a crony as Prime Minister and keep his SDSM party in power.

VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski, speaking minutes before Zaev, said that the opposition won a major victory, and called for early elections. As he spoke, celebrations erupted in front of the VMRO office, as supporters streamed to rejoice in the end of the road for the hated Prime Minister who imposed numerous national humiliations on the country.

Zaev has only 62 seats in Parliament – out of 120, and his SDSM party directly controls only about 35. The reliability of many of his allies is uncertain, especially in face of the defeat in the local elections, in which nominal allies like DOM and LPD openly campaigned against him, while others, like DUI, obviously did not support his candidates in the second round of the elections.
VMRO-DPMNE has 44 seats, and is far less dependent on coalition partners. With the Alliance of Albanians and Alternative – the two Albanian opposition parties that competed in the local elections together with VMRO, and with the populist Levica party that joined the opposition coalition after the first round, the opposition now has 58 seats, meaning that the defection of one smaller partner can bring down Zaev’s coalition.

The outcome of the elections was a brutal rebuke for SDSM. Of all major cities in Macedonia, the party won only in Zaev’s stronghold of Strumica. Of the urban centers in Skopje – only in Centar, and even that after a run-off. SDSM lost about half of its votes in the 2017 local elections – some due to the overall Covid reduction in turnout, others due to to defections from smaller coalition partners like LDP/DOM, but the bulk of them are former SDSM voters who turned against the party. VMRO-DPMNE also lost votes compared to both 2017 and the 2020 general elections, that were held under Covid conditions, but not nearly as much as SDSM. SDSM also campaigned dirty – Zaev used an “up-yours” hand gesture against the VMRO supported female mayoral candidate in Skopje Danela Arsovska, then initiated a brutal campaign to declare her a “Bulgarian agent”, while using police ad local thugs to intimidate opposition activists and journalists who reported on his vote buying.

In the end, Arsovska demolished Zaev’s candidate in Skopje Petre Silegov, the margin of her victory increased by the unusual abstention of voters in Albanian majority parts of the city – a possible sign that DUI pulled the rug from under Zaev’s feet and is  working to bring down his coalition from within.

VMRO-DPMNE won in Skopje in the second round, as well as in Bitola and Ohrid, two culturally and economically important cities that initially gave Zaev and SDSM a chance. More right wing oriented cities like Prilep, Stip and Veles voted for VMRO outright, in the first round, as did the bulk of the separate municipalities that make up the capital – Aerodrom, Kisela Voda, Gjorce Petrov, Gazi Baba and Butel, some by 2:! margins. A number of smaller cities and rural municipalities followed the lead and went from narrow SDSM wins in the first round to VMRO wins in the second: Kocani, Makedonska Kamenica, Resen… With his heavy handed police tactics, Zaev managed to alienate even the voters in Kumanovo – which has elected nothing but SDSM mayors for three decades – a rebel party official Maksim Dimitrievski was re-elected Mayor, defeating the SDSM candidate with VMRO support – as did former SDSM official Stevce Jakimovski in Skopje’s Karpos district.

In the Albanian camp, Ali Ahmeti’s DUI party, which has been part of the Government almost non-stop since 2002, greatly outclassed the opposition Albanian parties in the races for city councils in the first round. But with the help of VMRO-DPMNE, the Alliance of Albaninas kept the mayoral seat in Gostivar, while BESA, the smaller, Erdoganist coalition partner in Zaev’s Government, won Tetovo, depriving DUI the two most important city halls that Albanian parties can win in the country. This is certain to cause new frictions in the coalition and add to Zaev’s troubles, as both DUI and BESA are crucial to the continued survival of his Government.