The theory that Zaev will wait until the end of the local elections to announce his decision whether to accept Filipce's resignation seems to be difficult to implement. Six more weeks should pass for such a thing, brother and sister, and that period would be too long not only in terms of political decency for making such a decision, but also for waiting for the results of the investigation until then. One does not have to be a great expert to guess that this delay would clearly, at the very least, be politically difficult to affect the government in the results of the upcoming local elections, even to calm down the protest tensions in the country as a result of the Tetovo tragedy, especially after the events in Tetovo last weekend.

On the other hand, yesterday I looked at the initial results of the survey of the respectable public opinion research agency in Macedonia, "Brima", whose exclusive publishing rights were provided by "Free Press" and "Morning Briefing" in its today's editions. Although Brima's field survey activities were completed a day or two after the Tetovo fire - meaning they could not comprehensively measure public sentiment after the event - the survey data could encourage Zaev to make a decision "in the right direction". "(What will she be ?!).

Namely, although the ratings of Macedonian politicians and political parties are desperately low, Zaev himself is by far the most supported politician in the country with a rating of nearly 12%, compared to the list of all others after him led by Hristijan Mickoski with 7% and down! SDSM itself, according to this poll, leads two percentage points in the rating before VMRO-DPMNE (19,5% vs. 17,5%, similar to the polling projections for voting in the local elections), and when it would be "combined" with the coalition data on the common potentials of local elections, that difference is more convincing.

Interestingly, the Minister of Health Venko Filipce, in the surveys of the pulse of the Macedonian public on "Brima", is perceived as one of the few Macedonian politicians who - although they do not have an impressive overall rating! - has (as well as Pendarovski, Vrpochem) a significantly higher capacity than most other colleagues from both the ruling and opposition scene to unite citizens around his departmental engagement: for him "even" 41% of respondents expressed a favorable attitude, which is much higher than his own personal rating. (The bad news for him is that 56% of the respondents do not share that benevolent opinion, but if you look at the other statistics of those from the government and the opposition, Filipce's day must seem very good to him!)

If we add to that the ruthless and, often, indecent oppositional, partisan 24/7 party in connection with the fire in Tetovo, which can result in unpredictable reactions of the public - and I have already written that it certainly unites at least the party voters around SDSM and the survival of Filipce himself - it becomes clear that it suits Zaev sooner rather than later to express his definite position on accepting or rejecting the offered resignation of the Minister of Health (and even his deputy, Ilir Hasani).

In other words, delays in difficult (for Zaev) decisions in politics can have unpredictable effects… Like Filipce himself, in a firm "embrace" with Zaev, undoubtedly part of building the permanently higher rating of SDSM in relation to their main political opponent in the last few years, so the controversy with his resignation can "immerse" that party rating in local elections just enough to significantly lose the election.

I have always thought that the old saying that politics is very close to supposedly the world's oldest craft has nothing to do with expressing a sexist attitude. It is more a matter of understanding how far the principles can be bent in politics, without breaking the very axis that keeps the wheels turning.