Brvenica will elect a mayor on 18 October. The State Election Commission has adopted the timetable for the early local elections, called after the sudden death of mayor Jovica Ilievski.

The deadlines are already set: inspection and closure of the electoral roll from 22 August to 10 September, collection of signatures for candidacies from 17 to 31 August, and the election campaign from 21 September to 16 October. The new municipal election commission was chosen by lot.

The president of the commission, Bojan Marichikj, said the body remains committed to its constitutional role - the guardian of the democratic right to vote.

Ilievski, of VMRO-DPMNE, won a second term at last year's local elections by a narrow margin over his rival Hakim Ramadani. That narrow margin is the key detail for what comes next. Brvenica is a municipality where every vote genuinely counts, and where one early race can change the picture completely.

The government had previously reviewed the information from the Ministry of Local Self-Government and established that there were legal grounds for terminating the mandate. Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said the procedure should continue through parliament, with the expectation that the elections would be held in the autumn.

The mechanism worked - the mayor's death, the grounds established, the timetable, the date. That is good news for an administration that rarely has good news. But there is another side to the story: a municipality will spend almost three months without an elected mayor, during the period when budgets for next year are being prepared.

The eighteenth of October is the date. Until then, Brvenica will be a municipality with an administration, but without a political mandate behind its decisions.