Kosovo’s prime minister looks for allies for new Cabinet after failing to win parliamentary majority
Kosovo’s prime minister looks for allies for new Cabinet after failing to win parliamentary majority
PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s leftist party won the most seats in the parliamentary election, but was left without a majority in the house, forcing it to look for an ally to form the next government, according to preliminary results released Monday.
The vote on Sunday was key in determining who will lead Kosovo as talks on normalizing ties with Serbia remain stalled and foreign funding for one of Europe’s poorest countries is in question.
The election marked the first time since independence in 2008 that Kosovo’s parliament completed a full four-year mandate. It was the ninth parliamentary vote in Kosovo since the end of the 1998-1999 war between Serbian government forces and ethnic Albanian separatists that pushed Serbian forces out following a 78-day NATO air campaign.
Serbia doesn’t recognize Kosovo’s independence.
With 98% of the votes counted, Kurti’s Self-Determination Movement Party, or Vetevendosje!, had won 40.94%, according to the Central Election Commission, the election governing body.
The Democratic Party of Kosovo, or PDK, whose main leaders are detained at a Netherlands-based international criminal tribunal in The Hague and accused of war crimes, won 22.11% of the vote.
Next, with 17.67% support is the Democratic League of Kosovo, or LDK, the oldest party in the country. The LDK lost much of its support after the death in 2006 of its leader, Ibrahim Rugova. The Alliance for Kosovo’s Future party of former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj garnered 7.44% of the votes.
Still, Kurti was upbeat, though his remarks gave nothing away about who he plans to ask to join his coalition government.
“The people won. Vetevendosje! won. We are the winners who will form the next Cabinet,” Kurti told journalists as his supporters took to the streets to celebrate.
The commission’s webpage was down temporarily on Sunday as it was overloaded “due to the citizens’ high interest to learn the results,” the election body said. Results were collected manually.
A preliminary turnout after 92% of the votes were counted was 40.6% — about 7% lower than four years ago.
The new 120-seat parliament reserves 20 seats for minorities regardless of election results, 10 of them for the Serb minority.
Kurti’s new term will face multiple challenges after Washington froze foreign aid and the European Union suspended funding for some projects almost two years ago. He is also under pressure to increase public salaries and pensions, improve education and health services, and fight poverty.
Kosovo, with a population of 1.6 million, is one of the poorest countries in Europe with an annual gross domestic product of less than 6,000 euros ($6,200) per person.
Kurti is also likely to try and repair ties with Western powers, at odds since his Cabinet took several steps that raised tensions with Serbia and Kosovo’s ethnic Serbs, including the ban on the use of the Serbian currency, the dinar, and dinar transfers to Kosovo’s Serbs.
Kosovo’s ethnic Serb minority depends on Belgrade’s social services and payments.
The U.S., the EU and the NATO-led stabilization force in Kosovo, or KFOR, have urged the government in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, to refrain from unilateral actions, fearing the revival of interethnic conflict.
The EU’s ambassador to Kosovo, Aivo Orav, hoped that forming a new Cabinet would be “smooth.” He said that the new government should meet the expectations of the population, most of whom support Kosovo’s desire to join the 27-nation bloc.
“They associate the European Union with human rights, with rule of law and with a better life. To get that, the new government has to work very, very actively. Hard homework is needed to be done. Reforms have to be done,” he told The Associated Press.
“Normalization of the relations is a must for Kosovo and for Serbia,” he said.
In Sunday’s election, Srpska Lista, the main party of the ethnic Serb minority, won 4.33% of the vote — less than one percentage lower than its performance four years ago.
The party’s leader, Zlatan Elek, thanked Serbia President Aleksandar Vucic for the “strong support for our people.”
Dusan Radakovic, a political analyst in the north of Mitrovica said that “people definitely still have faith in Belgrade and trust that Srpska Lista will balance the scales in the process of solving our problems.”
KFOR had increased its presence in Kosovo after last year’s tensions with Serbia, as well as before the election.
A team of 104 observers from the EU, 18 from the Council of Europe and about 1,600 others from international or local organizations monitored the vote.
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Vojislav Stjepanovic contributed to this report from Mitrovica.
By LLAZAR SEMINI
Associated Press
