The former minister of health in Zoran Zaev's cabinet Venko Filipche is the new chairman of the SDSM, elected in the internal party elections that yesterday were held in the Republic of North Macedonia, BTA reported.
Out of a total of 12,609 members of the SDSM who participated in the elections, Filipce won 9,052 votes, his opponents Jovan Despotovski - 2,705, and Aleksandar Baidevski - 905. The third candidate, Slavyanka Petrovska, said last night that she had information that could to question the democracy and legitimacy of the elections and withdrew her candidacy, but her name remained on the ballot, and 190 members of the SDSM voted for her. The election results are at 95 percent of the processed results in the 77 sections in which the SDSM members who registered to participate in the vote voted, and the final results will be announced in 48 hours, when the period for objections expires, announced the chairman of the election commission of Viktoria Avramoska-Madić, according to whom the elections were fair and democratic, and the violations for which they received signals "did not affect the final result".
„ SDSM has proven that it has a democratic capacity, which, as chairman, I will develop. For me, winning means a huge responsibility. In SDSM, professionalism and empathy won. I will be guided by the principles of respect and camaraderie. It's time to renew the SDSM. A period of changes awaits us, there is no other way to regain the trust of the citizens. I believe that SDSM will come back even stronger. I promise that I will not divide, but unite, I will strongly oppose those who put the party at their service. We will be a strong opposition, we will be corrective. We will be the voice of reason, of democracy, and the citizens must see this in our country so that they too recognize it”, said Venko Filipche in his short address, after the announcement of the election results.
Jovan Despotovski, for his part, announced that more than 10,000 members of the SDSM, who had registered to participate in the elections, could not vote and that he would submit objections to the electoral commission.
„As a friend, I am happy for Venko, but I am not happy for SDSM. The election of the chairman cannot be announced before the objections are considered, because he was elected with fewer votes than those who were not given the opportunity to vote, Despotovski said.
The third candidate for the chairman of the SDSM, Aleksandar Baidevski, congratulated Filipce on his election and called for the suspended congress of the SDSM to be completed in order to analyze the results of the SDSM in the parliamentary elections, which were held in North Macedonia on May 8, and the SDSM got the lowest score of its existence. It was this result that caused Dimitar Kovachevski to resign and to hold today's internal party elections.
Venko Filipce's election is not a surprise, the media in North Macedonia predicted this result, explaining it with the close relationship between him and former Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, whose mandate Venko Filipce will actually finish. He will head the SDSM until March 24, 2025, when the party must hold regular elections for a chairman who will have a four-year term at the head of the party.