LJUBOMIR KOSTOVSKI
The ruling coalition has no ideological affinities – they won votes in the parliamentary elections 17 months ago thanks to nationalist slogans. Now, the harvest from the local elections is essentially bitter, and has led to serious mutual accusations within the governing coalition. If it only referred to the fate of a few parties, everything would be “no big deal,” it would only refer to certain Macedonian-Albanian elites.
But the matter opens some old wounds, and as could be expected when it comes to the parties of this coalition, it was only a matter of time before someone would use the lighters they were handing out at voters’ doors. So, those at the top of the government who complained to embassies that Skopje’s isolated mayor was destroying their coalition relations with her actions against illegal constructions in Cair (according to Danela Arsovska’s statement) turned out that the entire governing structure was built using a poor adhesive of dishonesty, and that at the first bend it stands on the edge of a ditch.
Before the second round of the elections, where mayors of many municipalities are to be decided, some kind of compromise should have been reached, but the impression is that there is none. Primarily, because that lighter we mentioned earlier has already ignited certain passions among voters on both sides, who now, like fans in a football stadium, will decide while waving their party flags whether they will vote for one of the coalition partners, their supposed allies; or they will not vote as a possible option, or more likely, they will align themselves along national rather than party lines! This development of events does not please the Prime Minister, and it seems that he, not just because of his office, is more concerned than Kasami, for example. The Russian propaganda could be satisfied with creating lasting instability.
Some analysts, with experience, I must admit, say that VMRO-DPMNE voters would now like to see the original party, the one of the founders who entered the political scene with the hardest nationalist slogans. These are not perhaps the 150 thousand voters who remained passive, but also some of those who voted according to the command of the party elders, and are now disappointed by the determination of Albanian voters not to reciprocate “where they should”. They are also uncomfortable under the eyes of neighbors and fellow citizens, who see them as losers in some kind of a political betting shop where, supposedly, it was easy to predict the results of the electoral contests!
The fact that Mickoski gave the order to tear down the stage preparations for the celebration in front of the Tatarchev Palace and left the bargained musicians without a stand (even though they would have played for free), cannot escape analytical assessment of some biting of the lower lip by the leader.
Resignation from success in the first round among VMRO-DPMNE appears with the assessment that in the second round, it could be thrown together with the trough of the coalition connection!
Let’s just suppose—in Kicevo, polarization along national lines will ignite many passions, and the defeat of the VMRO-DPMNE candidate is almost visible on the Sunday horizon. In Struga, VMRO’s votes due to the — conditionally —predictable voting in Kicevo, could mean that members and sympathizers of this party will not be voting for the elections, which would rock the already small advantage that Kjira has, and give wings to DUI voters (who also, although in smaller numbers, received votes from Macedonian voters, especially in the villages!).
The situation is even more complicated in the second round of voting in Kumanovo, where Albanian votes might merge towards the candidate who is otherwise independent, and therefore does not initially carry any animosity towards himself, plus there are the possible votes of SDSM supporters.
Not to mention Skopje—the success of Mickoski’s candidate depends exclusively on the support of VLEN, but even though that support exists on a rhetorical level with the overall complications in relations, it may be absent at least to the extent that Tatarchev Palace hopes for. On the other hand, on Wednesday it will be known whether other parties will stand behind the Levica candidate, whose greatest “misfortune” is in the figure of his president, who, with his confusing yet aggressive rhetoric, challenges the more composed electorate. This is what creates the dilemma: what kind of baggage does Amar bring to the scene, how many anonymous and perhaps worthless administrators can he bring with him, who will have to face the city’s enormous problems? Are they part of that same mass that at the founding elections in the Continental Hotel, once fought under the table over who would grab the party’s seal?
The coalition’s engagement is also problematic when it comes to the voting in Centar, where it’s unclear, for example, how those from “the strongest opposition party” as Apasiev would say, would vote – in the pre-election campaign for the first round, it turned out that the work of candidate Goran Gerasimovski and Levica’s candidate Marija Srebrova showed frequent coinciding in previous activities (2021–25). It’s clear that the latter might follow the party line, but Levica’s voters are not strictly party-affiliated, but voters in this organization tend to see it as some kind of a conditionally independent list.
Very little is being discussed about the voter turnout, and it isn’t good, viewed from a formal standpoint (I’m one of those who are firmly convinced that we cannot have 1.8 million inhabitants and just as many voters). A week ago, 46.63 percent, or 854,000 voters, voted. And, among them there were an astonishing 50,000 invalid ballots.
Basically, that low turnout cannot serve as an excuse for anyone—according to the usual rule, there’s a kind of seesaw on which VMRO and SDSM alternate in inverse proportion (when it dawns for one, it darkens for the other).
The key problem is that the aspirations of the red-black’s have always meant further destruction of the hard-won, indeed already fragile postulates of democracy. The episodes involving this party’s pressure on independent candidates in Brod and Mogila, for example, are just one piece of evidence in that direction, while the SEC (State Election Commission) is not even capable of fully addressing this issue. Considering who heads this body (on the part of SDSM, the well-known Vodno complex decides on that position), there will be no activity that implies more work. Let the bell ring for the end of class and let’s go home—that’s the credo of this body. First, let’s get our per diems.
Clearly, the dilemma remains as to what will happen to interethnic relations, which do not depend on that dilemma at the beginning—whether the coalition will fall in the ditch of the electoral curve.
The text is the personal view of the Author.