The ruling SDSM party published results from the elections it held yesterday, re-electing Zoran Zaev as party leader. Zaev ran unopposed but the party still declared the election a major win for democracy, since it was the first time it had its members vote directly.

Zaev won 59,240 votes, with 865 against and 277 invalid ballots. The only options were to vote for or against Zaev. Critics said that having only one option on the ballot seemed more like elections in North Korea than “North” Macedonia, but the ruling party was not perturbed.

SDSM conducted a transparent, democratic, intra-party electoral process in line with our statute. All 237 polling stations in all 80 municipalities were open from 8h to 19h and the voting was safe, the SDSM party insisted.

This is in response to the criticism leveled at the party, and especially its Healthcare Minister Venko Filipce, for dragging out tens of thousands of people and assigning electoral commission members to interact with the thousands, in the midst of the Third Wave of the coronavirus pandemic. SDSM initially announced that the election will take place online but later the party changed the plan and had municipal authorities open the local schools for their electoral commissions, only adding to the threat of spreading the virus. Filipce had dozens of angry comments in response to his social media post in which he congratulated Zaev on his re-election, reminding the Minister that Macedonia lags the rest of the region in procuring vaccines, and has some of the worst mortality and infection rates around, but the ruling party is holding elections. The ruling party even violated the overnight curfew that is in place to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, just so that Zaev can have its victory party.

Regardless of the healthcare threat, all top SDSM party officials voted and posted obligatory pictures of them voting for the leader and congratulated him after the results were in. This was driven by Zaev’s announcement that he will shake up the party now that he has renewed his mandate. Zaev assured those in the Government that they are safe, for now, but said that “there will be refreshment of the cadres in the SDSM leadership”.

More worrying for Zaev is that about 10,000 party members did not show up to vote. Before the election, the party said that it has just under 70,000 active members who were given electronic cards for voting. Zaev won the votes of nearly all who voted, but about 10,000 of them were absent – whether from fear of the coronavirus, or in a sign of protest against Zaev and his policies. Among them was former party leader Branko Crvenkovski, who earlier this year announced that he is freezing his membership in the party in protest against Zaev appeasement of Bulgaria. A number of top former party officials have joined Crvenkovski in this split that threatens to weaken the party when it faces an actual electoral challenge in October, for the municipal elections.