Following the meeting of party leaders convened by President Pendarovski, SDSM party leader Zoran Zaev came out again with a request that elections are held in June, mid July at the latest. Zaev has been pushing for early elections for weeks, even trying to re-convene the Parliament unilaterally, to the dismay of other parties who said that they can’t accept low turnout elections, under conditions when the voters will still be scared from going to the polls because of the epidemic.

We determined that we will need to live with the coronavirus. Nobody in the world or in the European lands or in the Republic of “North” Macedonia can say when the coronavirus crisis will end and that there will be no more infections in the future. This placed us in a position that we all agreed that we must live with the corona crisis and that the first available moment is seized to hold elections and we go to the polls, Zaev said.

Contrary to the position of the head of the State Electoral Commission, Zaev insisted that SEC can merely resume the work it was doing for the elections planned for April 12, and doesn’t have to begin the process from start. He opened his remearks to the press busily detailing possible election dates, auctioneering with a possible move by President Stevo Pendarovski, who is Zaev’s loyalist, to extend the state of emergency by a week, two weeks, a month or not at all. The dates Zaev named ranged between June 8 and July 7.

Regarding the issue of having international monitors, Zaev said that another of his loyalists, interim Prime Minister Oliver Spasovski, will be in touch with OSCE and will ask the how soon can they send a mission to Macedonia.