North Macedonia’s foreign minister, Bujar Osmani was invited to speak about the recent local elections in his country, by ‘Balkan Talks’ show host, Franko Egro.
At the beginning of his video conference call, Osmani said that the Democratic Union (BDI) has seen a definite improvement in these elections by confirming that it ranks first amongst ethnic Albanian parties in the country.
“We’ve won 124 thousand votes for our candidates and around 104 thousand votes for commune councils. This is a fundamental growth compared to the 2017 results. BDI is now confirmed as the party that’s supported by the majority of Albanians [in North Macedonia],” – said Osmani.
In regards to the results in the commune of Tetovo, where BDI has established its party’s central headquarters, Osmani said that the presence of several candidates is what made victory more difficult to achieve during the first voting round.
“We’re going into the second round with a bigger advantage of around 11 thousand votes, compared to the second candidate. We are the definite winners in Tetovo,” – said N. Macedonia’s foreign minister.
When asked about the party’s loss of over 8 000 votes in the commune of Kercova, Osmani justified it by saying that “there was a division of the votes seeing that there were two Albanian candidates and one Macedonian”.
In the second round of polls, where there will be a face-off between BDI and VMRO-DPMNE, Osmani said that the Coalition for Albanians will support the Macedonian candidate. The same thing, he said, will happen in both Vrapcishte and Haracine.
“BDI never puts national interests on the line, when it comes to our party interests or electoral calculations,” – said Osmani, adding that when it comes to Albanian parties in North Macedonia, having more than two isn’t ideal because it’s brought about division amongst Albanians, along with making them weaker and more fragmentized.
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