After more than a month since the election of the city mayor and almost two months since the election of the new Municipal Council, local government in Struga has not been able to be consolidated.

Macedonian Prime Minister and VMRO-DPMNE leader Hristijan Mickoski questioned support for Mayor Mendi Qyra, saying he left a “disastrous impression” at first. On the other hand, none of the parties that entered the Municipal Council has and currently cannot secure a majority, which is why a Council president has not yet been elected.

If there is no functional government, according to representatives of the political power with whom Radio Free Europe spoke, the citizens will suffer the consequences. This municipality, which is located on the shores of Lake Ohrid in the southwestern part of North Macedonia, is home to about 50.000 inhabitants.

The mayor is confident that he will cooperate with the prime minister.
Mendi Qyra, who comes from the business sector, is the only candidate to have won the mayor’s post in Struga, and at least on paper, he ran as an independent candidate. The ruling coalition, VMRO-DPMNE and VLEN, did not field candidates for Struga, but supported him. Considering Mickoski’s statements that he had disappointed him, the mayor considered that their cooperation could continue, because “the municipality is above all” and “we need each other.”

"I think this is not a statement that can ruin relations. We will continue to cooperate because the Municipality of Struga needs major projects that are necessary for the citizens," Qyra told Radio Free Europe.

Mickoski made the criticisms against him after the celebration of the Albanian National Flag Day on November 28, due to the failure to display the Macedonian state flag, which is a legal obligation.

“He doesn’t deserve support… He had a bad start, there’s no second chance for a first impression,” Mickoski said at a press conference on December 4, adding that he is not sure whether VMRO-DPMNE councilors will give him support in the future.

For not displaying the Macedonian flag during the holiday, the Struga police have also filed a request for a misdemeanor procedure against the Municipality and the mayor. But was this the only reason that "filled the cup" or are there other reasons for Mickoski's anger?

"I don't believe it. I can't know what the prime minister was thinking, but I think we will have good cooperation in the future," Qyra said.

He takes over the leadership of the municipality after the long rule of Ramiz Merko from the Democratic Union for Integration, who was the mayor of Struga for 16 of the last 20 years. Only in the period 2013-2017 did he not lead Struga. Merko ended up on the United States “blacklist” due to suspicions of corruption and interference in judicial processes, and in the last local elections, the DUI, together with its coalition, ran with another candidate in Struga.

Council without majority
An additional problem for Struga is the issue of the functionality of the Municipal Council. On November 14, a constitutive session was convened, but the Council's chairman was not elected. The opposition coalition National Alliance for Integration (AKI), led by DUI, proposed one of its councilors to take over the chairmanship of the Council, but the proposal did not pass.

In fact, AKI has the largest group of councilors, a total of eight members. The council has a total of 23 members, while 12 votes are needed for a majority. The ruling parties, VMRO-DPMNE with six and VALEN with four councilors, do not have a majority, while at the same time there are disagreements between them. SDSM and The Left are also represented by one councilor, while three councilors are from the independent list that publicly supported former chairman Ramiz Merko before the elections, and now they are often referred to by the rest of the councilors as the “Merko List”.

Both the mayor and some of the councilors hope to be elected as the Council President, but at the moment no one can confirm when and how they will secure a majority.

VMRO-DPMNE councilor Mite Stefoski said that they as a group of councilors demand the legal functioning of the Council and will not support "any voluntarism or arbitrariness" to violate procedures.

"I think that if we work on solving the problem, a solution will be found. We cannot function like this now, because citizens would not benefit anything from such a dysfunctional council," Stefoski told REL.

VMRO-DPMNE's dissatisfaction is centered on the fact that, even though no chairman was elected in the constitutive session, their colleagues call sessions based on the fact that in the meantime the Council should be led by the oldest member. In the current composition, he is Nafi Jonuzi from the ranks of VLEN.

"According to Article 47 of the Law on Local Self-Government, the sessions are called and led by the oldest councilor. Yes, in this case, that's me. We have some points that need to be passed and for this reason the Council will work normally," Jonuzi said in a conversation with REL, before the December 10 session, which he called.

The agenda for the session on December 10 included a dozen items, including the formation of various committees – for urbanism, tourism, and the voting on several quarterly reports. At the beginning of the session, an item was added as an urgent proposal to allocate 17 million denars from the municipal budget for primary education.

This case highlighted the disagreements with VMRO-DPMNE, who consider that regular sessions cannot be held without completing the constitution with the election of the chairman. If there are urgent points for voting, said Stefoski, then an extraordinary session can be called with a single point on the agenda. According to him, the commissions and quarterly reports are not urgent. For this reason, VMRO-DPMNE abandoned the session. The independent councilors did the same.

The conclusion of this session was that all items were withdrawn from the agenda, and the other councilors only approved the item on the distribution of money for primary education, which is intended for annual compensation (K-15) for teachers, payment of electricity, oil supply, and student transportation.

However, despite different positions on whether and what sessions should be held until there is a chairman, even VLEN said they expect to overcome the disagreements soon.

"The mayor will be elected when we have an agreement with the VMRO-DPMNE advisors and I expect this to happen soon, maybe these days," said Jonuzi.

However, they will also need to secure support from at least two colleagues from other parties or an independent list to reach 12 votes. They do not give specific names of who they want support from.

The opposition accuses of party calculations
While neither party publicly commented on whether there are other disagreements, the opposition blames the ineffective functioning so far on internal bargaining over the division of local government. For the sole councilor from the Social Democratic League (LSDM), Dimche Shipinkarovski, the problem with the election of the mayor is not legal or administrative, but political.

"The responsibility lies with those who formed the coalition and took the lead. Struga should not be held hostage to internal accounts, nor to bargaining behind closed doors. Institutions must function, the city has projects underway and obligations that must be fulfilled, as well as citizens who rightly expect stability," Shipinkarovski told Radio Free Europe.

A similar position is also taken by the AKI coalition. Faton Pollozhani from DUI emphasized that “mostly it seems to be a dispute between coalition partners.” Using the saying that “a good day is seen in the morning,” he said that the beginning has been bad and believes that efforts for further agreements will be difficult.

"What is publicly and clearly visible is that VMRO-DPMNE's pressure on the mayor and VLEN is increasing. I have no information about how their talks are going, what the demands are for the sharing of power at the local level, but it would be good for citizens to be informed, because the situation is becoming worrying even for the residents of the Struga municipality," Pollozhani told REL.

Mayor Qyra, for his part, assured that so far no unprincipled demands have been made by either VMRO or VLEN regarding the distribution of positions, such as those for the heads of public enterprises, schools, etc. He said that he expects the councilors of VMRO-DPMNE and VLEN, as coalition partners who supported him in the elections, to find common ground.

The Macedonian public has also witnessed dysfunctional councils and disagreements between councilors and the mayor in the case of the capital, Skopje. Former mayor Danela Arsovska, who won the elections as an independent candidate supported by VMRO-DPMNE, clashed with the party that was the largest in the City Council during her first year in office. She did not receive support for several projects, public enterprises faced problems, and Skopje residents had “a dilemma” with public transport and municipal waste collection.

Due to the lack of agreement and majority in the Council, Tetovo held extraordinary elections for municipal councilors in 2022. The reason was that during the first three months of 2022, the councilors did not have the majority to approve the final municipal expenditures for the previous year, which according to the Law on Local Self-Government is a condition for the dissolution of the Council and the holding of extraordinary elections./ REL