Macedonian protests

"I am not afraid to say that the Macedonians are our closest people, we have no closer people. And I clearly want to say that we do not want anything from North Macedonia. We have no strings attached and expect nothing from you. We only want to build even closer and better relations. We are not asking you to change your constitution, that is your internal business.

The largest party representing North Macedonia's ethnic Albanian minority offered to pull its ministers from the government to meet a demand from the opposition to clear the way for European Union membership talks.

Nikola Gruevski, who was tried in absentia, was found guilty at Skopje Criminal Court on Thursday of unlawfully acquiring over 1.3 million euros from his former ruling VMRO DPMNE party, and of instigating a money-laundering scheme to cover his tracks and buy property with the proceeds.

The leader of North Macedona's main opposition party, VMRO DPMNE, Hristijan Mickoski, joined the celebrations marking Viktor Orban's victory in Sunday's Hungarian elections at Orban's Fidesz party HQ in Budapest.

Dimitar Kovacevski, who is the current deputy Finance Minister in Zoran Zaev's government, won more than 37,000 of just over 44,000 votes in internal Social Democratic Party leadership elections on Sunday, leaving the other two candidates, Frosina Remenski and Jovan Despotovski, far behind.

North Macedonia's fragile coalition government can now breathe a bit easier with the support of 64 MPs in the 120-seat parliament, following an agreemeent clinched with the four MPs of the Alternative party.

The Prime Minister and Social Democratic Party leader, Zoran Zaev, and the head of Alternative, Aftim Gashi, signed the deal on Saturday.

Macedonian Deputy Prime Minister Artan Grubi claims that in December the Republic of North Macedonia (RNM) will receive positive signals for the start of negotiations for accession to the European Union (EU).

North Macedonia's Social Democratic PM Zoran Zaev late Tuesday postponed his announced resignation indefinitely, to try to sustain the current fragile majority in parliament and get the country out of its political crisis.

All of this while back in Gruevski's home country, things are in flux as well. Gruevski's conservative VMRO DPMNE party, which under his rule was widely accused of "capturing the state institutions" including the judiciary, is now in a serious position to take on the pro-European Social Democratic leader Zoran Zaev, who toppled Gruevski back in 2017.

A decision was made today to postpone both resignations. We neither debated nor decided on them. When I resigned on 31 October, I said that I would help maintain the parliamentary majority and work to increase it if possible. Such is the responsibility to the state and the people. It makes perfect sense to work on this process.