North Macedonia PM Zaev resigns after poor election outing

North Macedonia’s Prime Minister Zoran Zaev has announced his resignation after his party’s poor outing in municipal elections over the weekend.

The resignation was a result of months of dwindling popularity for the prime minister and his party, even as he struggled to keep the country’s economy on track amid the pandemic’s headwinds, and talks over possible accession to the European Union stalled.

Zeav announced the development in a press conference, taking responsibility for the poor results of the elections.

He said: “I have brought freedom and democracy, and democracy means taking responsibility.”

However, the premier offered few details or a timeline of when he would resign — a move that must be approved by parliament.

Meanwhile, the opposition leader Hristijan Mickoski said: “The government has been de-legitimised and that is the new reality that will be manifested in the parliament over time. However, it’s best if this happens through early parliamentary elections,” he said

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It would be recalled that Zaev was elected prime minister in 2017 after 10 years of right-wing rule led by strongman Nikola Gruevski whose government was shaken by a huge wiretapping scandal revealed by Zaev himself.

In 2018, Zaev struck a tough deal with Athens to add the geographical qualifier “North” to the country’s official name to distinguish it from the Greek province of Macedonia.

The name change was a precondition to paving the way for possible EU membership.

However, the country has since faced threats from Bulgaria to block the beginning of talks due to a separate spat — with Sofia disputing the origin of the Macedonian language, calling it a Bulgarian dialect.

Both countries also lay claim to certain historical events and figures, mainly from the Ottoman era.

Zaev had pledged to make progress on the EU accession talks after the country officially became a candidate for membership but has had little to show for it in recent months.

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