Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski has, with a clear statement, calmed the political nerves these past days - no elections this year. The focus, as he put it, is on „reforms and consolidation", and VMRO-DPMNE is ready both for regular elections in spring 2028 and for early ones if necessary.

All very nice. But if the party is always „ready" for elections, the question isn't whether they're ready - it's why the topic even gets opened every few months.

Mickoski himself points out that the government has opened over 15,000 new jobs in the past year, that they're working on food and transport prices, that institutions will respect the law. Standard rhetoric. What he didn't say is the more telling part: do „reforms and consolidation" fail to work precisely because every six months the opposition and the government drag each other into a discussion about elections?

SDSM, on the other hand, claims the opposite - that Mickoski is „rushing to elections" before the investigations coming „after Orbán's fall" reach him. Filipče said his side is also „ready". Even Deutsche Welle registered the statement as „a churn on the political stage" - with the clear message that not even the prime minister is sure of his next move.

When every party is „ready for elections" at any given time, it means there is no stable governance in the country - just a permanent campaign mode. Institutions are not built during a campaign. They disintegrate.

Citizens are listening to yet another version of the same political theatre - maybe 2027, maybe 2028, maybe sooner. Meanwhile, the prices of electricity, the food basket and healthcare are waiting - and nobody is talking about them.

We're asking just one thing: if the function of the political system is for us to spend every year asking whether there will be elections, then who is actually running the state in between two campaigns?