The President of North Macedonia, Stevo Pendarovski, said that the announced resignation of the Prime Minister and President of SDSM, Zoran Zaev, came as a very big surprise to representatives of the international community, because he had been quite a positive example in recent years.

-I will now allow myself a little discretion, I had a short meeting, these were short meetings, I cannot say they were conversations. However, the German Chancellor asked me several times about the motives for the resignation, whether I thought it was the right move. My answer, and I conveyed this to Zaev after returning, was that certainly it is not. Of course not. For losing one, two, three, five or ten municipalities, for losing in local elections, regardless of what has been promised previously, this is another level in politics. You are leading a country. You have a mandate of four years, obtained legitimately and you cannot say in the middle of that mandate, due to Skopje, due to Prilep, Kumanovo and so on, I am leaving, said Pendarovski in an interview for TV 21.

This question, according to the State President, he has been asked by many others as well, such as the Secretary General of NATO.

– The Secretary General of NATO, out of his character so to say, Scandinavian, asked me the same question twice in one hour, in an hour and a half, because we were in one of those rooms where we were preparing for sessions and he kept asking me, why? I told him, it would be good for him to directly hear Zaev, for him to explain. So, the international community was very surprised, because you know that in these recent years, Zaev was seen quite positively by the whole international community, pointed out Pendarovski.

Translation: N. Cvetkovska