SDSM dropped another bomb this Saturday. According to party statements, Maksim Dimitrievski - mayor of Kumanovo and leader of the ZNAM party - is the owner of a Bulgarian company called „MBS Global”. The firm was registered on 7 August 2015 at an address in Burgas, and operates in the wholesale of non-food products.

„The time for accountability is coming” - that is the headline of the party's statement. The irony: a party that is currently the largest opposition force in the country, and that was left out of government at the last parliamentary election, is now going after VMRO-DPMNE's coalition partners. The point of the attack isn't simply the existence of the company - it is the contradiction between ZNAM's anti-corruption rhetoric and the fact of foreign business holdings.

SDSM also mentions another company: „AJFIH DOO” from Dobrošane, Kumanovo, owned by the wives of Dimitrievski and Serafimovski. That is a standard part of the playbook: if a party attacks corruption, look for assets registered to close family members, because that's where classic politicians tend to hide their businesses.

What does Dimitrievski say? So far - silence. That is the standard political playbook in this country: an accusatory statement, two or three days of silence, then a counter-statement that changes the subject. In the meantime, the public watches a party that lived off anti-corruption rhetoric suddenly turn up with its own Bulgarian companies. Is it illegal? We're not yet at that level - it's an ethical question, not necessarily a legal one.

The question in the background: is this SDSM trying to chill the enthusiasm for its former allies (ZNAM), now in a governing coalition with VMRO-DPMNE? That is a reasonable reading. Opposition parties rarely publish material damaging to the ruling coalition's partners without a political purpose.

Kumanovo, in the meantime, remains a city with plenty of problems and little progress on any of them - from infrastructure to the inability to bring back in-city health and education resources that left the town over the last 20 years. Does the mayor have a Bulgarian company? That is an important question. Will it solve the daily life of 80,000 Kumanovo residents? No. That is the difference between a political scandal and the real needs of citizens, and paradoxically, the politics are far more focused on the former.