Zoran Zaev

Early life and political career

Zoran was born on October 8, 1974 in Strumica and he is a member of SDSM since 1996. He graduated from the Skopje Faculty of Economics in 1997, and then earned a master's degree in monetary economics at the same university. He was elected as chairman of the party's Strumica regional administration in two terms. Zaev served as vice president of the party from 2006 to 2008. Zaev won three consecutive local elections and served as mayor of Strumica from 2005 to 2016. After Branko Crvenkovski stepped down as leader of the party in 2013, Zaev was elected as its new leader.

Leader of the opposition

He was elected as leader of SDSM by receiving the majority of votes at his party's congress held in June 2013. Zaev served as a member of the Macedonian Assembly from 2003 to 2005, and became the vice president of the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia in 2006.

In January 2015, Zaev was accused by Macedonian prime minister Nikola Gruevski for conspiring with a foreign intelligence service to topple the government, assisted by a foreign diplomat also involved in the allegedly attempted coup d'état. Zaev in February accused Gruevski of wiretapping and illegally spying at least 20,000 people in the country. The public prosecutor, on the other hand, accused Zaev of blackmailing Gruevski and detained five people connected with that case. The case was later dropped due to insufficient evidence.

Zaev as leader of the opposition took part in a meeting with Gruevski and EU enlargement commissioner Johannes Hahn in June in order to overcome the political crisis. The negotiations resulted in the Pržino Agreement, which foresaw a caretaker government to organize a snap election in April 2016 and a Special Public Prosecution to investigate the wiretaps scandal. Zaev threatened to boycott the election because Gruevski obstructed the Pržino Agreement and the reforms in the judiciary system and the media. Early elections were held in December 2016, after which Zaev formed a coalition government with the Democratic Union for Integration and the Besa Movement in May 2017.

Prime Minister

Zaev's party won 436,981 votes and according to him he won 42,000 votes of Albanians, 60% of the Serbian minority vote, 50% of the Turkish and 45% of the Romani. On May 31, 2017 the Macedonian Parliament voted Zoran Zaev as the new Prime Minister and his government, consisting of a coalition with two Albanian parties. The voting ended months of political uncertainty. The new government was voted in by 62 out of 120 MPs.

An inquiry of 1,159 Macedonian citizens by the Macedonian Brima Gallup International Association, carried out in June, 2017, showed that 62% of the population supports Zaev as a Prime Minister. During his speech, Zaev presented the program of the new government, saying that joining NATO and the EU will be a priority in the following years. He also promised economic growth and an end to corruption by announcing a responsible, reformist, European government. Some newspapers interpretated some statements of Zaev for the newspapers BGNES and Kurir as a claim asserting the Macedonians as one nation with the Bulgarians or the Serbs. What Zaev was recorded to say on the original video interview of the Bulgarian newspaper "BGNES" was "I want to send a message to all the citizens of Bulgaria. We are brotherly people, the same nation." and what he stated during an interview of the Serbian newspaper "Kurir" was "The Serbs and the Macedonians are brotherly people" and "Nobody asked Zoran Zaev to do anything against Macedonians, against Serbs, against any ethnic community, or against any of our neighbors. We heard allegations asserting Zaev as condemning Serbia for a genocide. It's for me the same my nation.".