On Thursday morning its prime minister of North Macedonia Dimitar Kovacevski will submit his resignation, as he announced today.

With the resignation of the prime minister, the entire government of the country resigns. By the end of the week, a caretaker prime minister and a caretaker government will have been appointed in the country.

This development results from the electoral legislation of North Macedonia, according to which 100 days before the holding of the parliamentary elections, a caretaker government is formed to lead the country until the parliamentary elections.

Parliamentary elections in North Macedonia will be held on May 8. This means that a caretaker government will be formed by Sunday, January 28 at the latest, which must receive a vote of confidence from the country’s Parliament.

Based on a political agreement between the co-ruling parties “Social Democratic Union” (SDSM), led by Dimitar Kovačevski, and the Albanian DUI, led by Ali Ahmeti, this caretaker government will be headed by a person nominated by the Albanian party and for the first time in the country’s history, since 1991 when it gained its independence, the country will have an Albanian prime minister, even for 100 days.

The DUI proposed as acting prime minister the current president of the Parliament and a high-ranking official of this Albanian party, Talat Xhaferi.

According to the electoral legislation, the opposition also participates in this caretaker government with two ministers from its ranks (Interior and Labour). These ministers will be nominated by the main opposition party, the right-wing VMRO-DPMNE. However, this party, despite the fact that it has decided to participate in the caretaker government, will abstain, as it stated, from the vote in Parliament to provide a vote of confidence in the caretaker government, because it considers Talat Jafferi “unsuitable” for the country’s prime minister, for which he claims is a “symbol of the corruption of the outgoing government”.

Dimitar Kovacevsky said that until Sunday 28 January there is time for everyone to sit down and think responsibly and vote for the caretaker government.

“No one can act like a 13-year-old child, saying I will nominate ministers, but I will not vote. Everyone should be serious, nowhere in the world will you find an example where one nominates ministers and asks someone else to vote for them,” noted Dimitar Kovacevsky.

The 62-year-old Talat Xhaferi, who will take over as interim prime minister, has been the president of the Parliament of North Macedonia since 2017, while in the 2013-2014 period he served as Minister of Defense in the VMRO-DPMNE-DUI coalition, whose prime minister was Nikola Gruevski. SDSM parliamentary representative Jovan Mitrevski will be appointed as the new president of the Parliament.

О Talat Xhaferi was first elected Speaker of the House on April 27, 2017, in an episodic session of the House, amid strong protests by VMRO-DPMNE MPs, which was marred by hundreds of Nikola Gruevski’s supporters storming the Parliament and beating up his MPs SDSM and Albanian parties. Those episodes worked as a catalyst for Gruevski’s removal from power and the emergence of a new government, with Zoran Zaev as prime minister.

Albanians make up 25% of the population of North Macedonia.

The parliamentary elections on 8 May will coincide with the second round of the presidential elections in North Macedonia, which is considered a foregone conclusion, since, as expected, none of the candidates for the presidential seat will gather more than 50% in the first round which will held on April 24.