In its initial response after Zoran Zaev said he may try to get away from holding early elections in April, VMRO-DPMNE Vice President Aleksandar Nikoloski said that the move is the result of Zaev’s fear of electoral defeat. Zaev agreed to early elections after he failed to secure the opening of EU accession talks in October last year, but has since tried a number of times to avoid the agreement, citing different reasons as an excuse. His latest request is that the Parliament adopts a series of laws, including renaming the Macedonian army and a law on state prosecutors tailor made to fit Zaev’s needs, before it is dissolved on February 12.

When Zaev realized that he will not get the law on prosecutors he wanted to protect himself from responsibility for his crimes, now he is trying to postpone the elections. He keeps trying to avoid the vote – first he cited the lag in the ratification of the NATO accession protocol, then wanted a bunch of laws he failed to propose over the past three years adopted urgently, then he disputed our pick of Interior Minister and now this. Zaev wants a law on state prosecutors that would amnesty him from responsibility for his crimes, and if he gets one, he will just come up with another reason to postpone the elections. We will be notifying the EU and EPP heads in Brussels about this. Agreements must be kept. All else is dictatorship. There will be elections on April 12, Nikoloski said.

The date for the early elections was agreed by all main political parties. It takes 61 votes in Parliament to dissolve it. Zaev did honor his obligation to resign shortly after New Year, to allow an interim Prime Minister (his loyalist Oliver Spasovski) to lead the Government and several opposition nominated officials to lead some of the main departments. Throughout 2016, while he was in the opposition, Zaev famously kept postponing the agreed early elections until his ally, now disgraced prosecutor Katica Janeva could ensnare enough VMRO officials in her politically motivated trials, and he could arrange for support from ethnic Albanian districts for his SDSM party.