Former SDSM party leader Radmila Sekerinska, who resigned as Zoran Zaev’s deputy party leader early this year but kept her position of Defense Minister, announced that she will not be part of the next Government. She blamed the party of “not learning the lessons”, after a candidate close to her – Jovan Despotovski – ranked poorly in the leadership contest, losing to Zaev’s handpicked candidate Dimitar Kovacevski.

Zaev is now expected to make an attempt to install Kovacevski as Prime Minister, possibly as early as the first weeks of January, meaning that Sekerinska could be out of the Government soon.

Unfortunately, my impression is that we didn’t learn our lessons and that we didn’t hear or comprehend some of the messages from the public. That is why I think that the only honest and principled approach is that I’m not part of the next Government, Sekerinska said.

In her typical vague style, she did not name the failures she is accusing the party of. Even more typically, in her comments she pointed to her own contribution to the entry of Macedonia into NATO – the one bright spot of the Zaev term in office.