SDSM mayoral candidate Petre Silegov announced that he will again nominate an ethnic Albanian as Deputy Mayor of Skopje, if he wins re-election on Sunday.

In his first term, Silegov appointed businessman Enver Maliqi as his deputy. Maliqi died in late 2020 from coronavirus infection. Silegov re-election again hinges on the Albanian voters, as SDSM normally loses the ethnic Macedonian vote to VMRO-DPMNE. This time around, for the first time, SDSM faces a coalition of VMRO and the opposition Albanian parties AA and Alternative, complicating their usual path to victory.