Late yesterday evening the the Parliament approved the election of four new ministers, with just 65 votes that is the new, slim majority of SDSM, DUI and the Alliance of Albanians.

The new ministers are Krenar Loga in the Justice Ministry, Fatmir Mexhiti as the new Healthcare Minister and Azir Aliu for Information Society. All three come from the Alliance of Albanians, which is the new coalition partner for SDSM and DUI, contributing 8 votes to their majority. Kaja Shukova from SDSM is the new Environment Minister – SDSM gave away the Justice Ministry to entice the Alliance of Albanians to join the coalition, and took the much smaller environment department from DUI in exchange. Mexhiti was elected with 64 votes in favor, and the other three got 65 votes, after which they were sworn in.

The SDSM – DUI majority was 64 strong before the reshuffle, when they had the support of the smaller Alternative party. Alternative lost all its departments in favor of AA and left the coalition, taking three votes with it, while one of its members of Parliament remains a tentative supporter of the new coalition. A faction in DUI, calling itself the Fire Faction, and led by Izet Mexhiti, formalized its own exit from the coalition, with its own three votes. And the DS party led by Pavle Trajanov followed suit, blaming SDSM of becoming too endebted to the ethnic Albanian parties with the Government now evenly split between Macedonians and Albanians. This brought SDSM and DUI to more or less the same place where they started off in terms of votes in Parliament. Faced with collapsing support among ethnic Macedonians and factions within DUI, these two parties are now openly planning to form a pre-election coalition for the 2024 elections, with the Alliance of Albanians, and hope that they will be able to even out the result of the opposition VMRO-DPMNE, and the Albanian parties BESA, the Alternative and the Fire Faction from DUI.