The Democratic Alliance (DS) party led by former Interior Minister Pavle Trajanov announced today that it is leaving the ruling coalition and will move to the opposition. DS has only one seat in Parliament – held by Trajanov, and the post of Deputy Minister for Local Administration, as well as additional lower level positions in the executive.

Trajanov was critical of the SDSM – DUI led coalition, especially as Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski is frantically trying to add more Albanian parties to his thin majority, as factions appear in both main parties. Trajanov demanded several concessions – some of them along with other smaller partners currently allied to SDSM: that the electoral model is changed to favor smaller parties who are currently forced to leach on to SDSM or VMRO-DPMNE, that there is serious fight against corruption and that the coalitions stops making further concessions to Albanian parties, considering that the Albanian minority now holds as many seats as ethnic Macedonians in the Government – or more if we count the deputy minister seats.

The Democratic Alliance will not support the reconstruction of the Government and won’t be part of the ruling majority. We wanted thorough reform of the election rules by abolishing the advantage enjoyed by the four largest parties. We want fight against corruption by departisation of the institutions that uncover crime and corruption, reforms in the judiciary and the creation of a Youth Fund, Trajanov said.

SDSM and DUI courted the Alliance of Albanians, one of the two largest opposition Albanian parties, to join their coalition and add its 8 seats. But they did this by giving AA the seats held by the Alternative party, which earlier today announced that it is leaving the coalition and taking three or all four of its votes with it. A fluid number of DUI representatives are also expected to vote against the new coalition, and with Trajanov’s defection, it now seems that the coalition will have more or less the same thin majority in Parliament even after adding the Alliance of Albanians to its mix. The Parliament session began today and by tomorrow it should be clear if SDSM, DUI, the Alliance of Albanians and their other smaller parties are even able to get to the necessary 61 votes.

Trajanov was a communist era police official who joined a call for reforms in the notorious police state apparatus, which earned him the seat of Interior Minister in the first VMRO-DPMNE government. He then founded a small party that would usually side with whichever of the two main parties, VMRO-DPMNE or SDSM, would come out stronger. In 2016 he contributed to the fall of the Gruevski Government by withdrawing his support, denying VMRO-DPMNE the 61 votes they needed to form a Government on their own.