After 24 years at the head of the party, Ali Ahmeti has announced he is stepping down from the leadership position of DUI. He said so in a speech at the Electoral Assembly of the party's branch in Kumanovo, indicating that he wants to join the ranks of the veterans. "I don't have a whole lifetime to be president of DUI," he said.

When one man leads the largest Albanian party in the country uninterrupted for nearly a quarter of a century, his withdrawal is not just intra-party news - it is a tectonic move in Macedonian politics. Ahmeti is a political figure whose name is tied to everything - from the armed conflict of 2001 and the Ohrid Framework Agreement, to decades of government in which DUI was an almost permanent coalition partner, regardless of who led the other side.

But the announcement should be read with a level head, the way all such announcements are read in the Balkans. Leaders who have ruled for decades often "step back" in a way that keeps the real power in their hands - through a successor they chose themselves, through a "veteran" position that still decides, through control that lies not in the title but in the network. The question is not whether Ahmeti will leave the post, but whether he will truly let go of the power.

For DUI's voters, this also opens a question long put off - what is the party without the man who created it and held it together for so long? Does a real generational change follow, or just a new face on the old structure? The answer will not be given by the speeches at the assembly, but by who really carries the decisions once the cameras go dark.