Education Minister Mila Carovska and municipal officials allowed the ruling SDSM party to use schools for its elections yesterday. The brazen politization was not restricted to schools – SDSM used cultural centers and even municipal offices for its stunt elections in which party leader Zoran Zaev ran unopposed – meaning that the vote was little more than a mass display of loyalty from party members.

Nearly 60,000 of the 70,000 registered members voted in the elections making them by far the biggest mass event in Macedonia since the coronavirus epidemic began. Schools are largely closed, with only the three lowest grades allowed to attend in-person classes, but the ruling party had thousands of people go through them yesterday, with the electoral committees asked to interact with multitudes of people.

VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski called on Education Minister Carovska to resign for the blatant abuse of the public schools.

Macedonia is a country in which the schools are used for partisan elections, instead as places of learning. In a normal country, the Education Minister would resign by the end of the day, Mickoski said.