By the New Year, RM will have a new government and a new prime minister

 It is certain that the Republic of Macedonia will have a new prime minister and a new government by the New Year, after Friday's meetings of the SDSM and Alternativa party leaders, the Skopje-based Deneshen newspaper said.

On December 12, SDSM will elect a new leader to succeed.   the resigned Zoran Zaev, for which the procedure starts on Sunday. This decision was made at Friday's meeting of the party's Central Council (CS). Alternative, on the other hand, authorized its chairman, Afrim Gashi, to talk to Zaev or his successor about joining the government.                                       SDSM spokeswoman Bogdanka Kuzevska said the Central Council, she said, had concluded that Zaev's resignation from the party needed to start the process of internal party elections. The submission of applications starts tomorrow and will last one week, and all members of SDSM who meet the criteria set out in the party's statute have the right to apply. All SDSM members who will actively register in the online mechanism will have the opportunity to vote. After the election of a new leader, the party bodies will be elected.                                                                                 Answering a journalist's question whether Dimitar Kovachevski's name was mentioned in the Central Committee as a possible successor to Zaev, Kuzeska said that this was done to find a quality person, without specifying other details.

Zaev informed at the meeting of the Central Committee that the parliamentary majority is stable, with 61 deputies and expects to create opportunities for its further increase in order to keep the European course of the country. Kuzevska did not give a specific answer as to who the 61st MP is.

"The Central Council believes that there is room for talks to join the Alternative to the ruling majority, based on principles and values, and the competence for this is assigned to Zaev," said Kuzevska.