Kosovo

Albin Kurti’s Pyrrhic victory

As expected, Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s Vetëvendosje party has won the parliamentary elections in Kosovo. However, after a four-year term of office with ups and downs, the “Party of Self-Determination”, as it is translated, lost almost ten percent compared to the last election in 2021 and is now dependent on a coalition partner. The Liberals come in as second strongest party.

The citizens of Kosovo are facing politically complicated days ahead: according to preliminary results after 95% of the votes cast have been counted, Prime Minister Kurti’s left-wing populist party has 41.2%. In the election four years ago, the ruling party achieved an absolute majority, now it has to find a coalition partner.

The ALDE member party PDK achieved 22.3 percent, while the conservative LDK won 17.7 percent of the vote. In addition, the AAK, an Albanian nationalist party, received 7.5 percent of the vote. Theoretically, there would therefore be a majority against the incumbent Vetëvendosje, but according to the constitution, the president gives the mandate to form a government to the party with the most votes.

How important is Kosovo to Donald Trump?

What makes the whole thing controversial are the comments made by Richard Grenell, US President Donald Trump’s “Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions”. In the days leading up to the election, he had interfered in the Kosovo election campaign with tweets against Albin Kurti, some of which were cutting in tone. According to Grenell, relations between Kosovo and the United States are at an all-time low. The Americans need reliable partners in the region, and „Kurti is certainly not one of them“, according to Grenell. The first government of Prime Minister Kurti had collapsed in 2020 following US interference by the Trump administration. The following year, Kurti was then re-elected by the people with an absolute majority.

It could therefore well be that the Americans want to forge an “anti-Kurti coalition”, which would be possible according to the preliminary election results. This is probably why Kurti proclaimed himself the winner during the night and announced his intention to form a government. The second-placed PDK has already ruled out a coalition with Kurti’s Vetëvendosje party, as has the AAK, which achieved the fourth-best result.

Uncertainty over election results in Serb-dominated northern Kosovo

Also on election night, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić declared that the branch of his “Serbian Progressive Party” (SNS) in Kosovo, the “Srpska Lista”, had won all ten of the mandates allocated to the Serbian minority. Of the 120 parliamentary seats, ten are distributed within the Serb minority, while another ten seats are reserved for all other minorities such as Bosniaks, Ashkali or Roma. Using similar methods to the SNS in Serbia, the Srpska Lista in northern Kosovo uses public pressure and even blackmail to ensure that people vote for them.

However, Kosovar media report that at least one seat will go to Nenad Rašić’s party. Rašić is a moderate Serbian politician from Kosovo who is in favour of the Serbs returning to Kosovo’s institutions and breaking free from Belgrade’s grip. “Belgrade has always behaved aggressively towards the Kosovo-Serbs and has not allowed them to develop their own political ideas,” said Rašić on election night. “Aleksandar Vučić is thus trying to suppress every authentic thought, every initiative that could be of benefit to everyone.”

Liberals with a mandate to govern?

The Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), a member of the European Liberals (ALDE) since 2022, improved its result by five percentage points compared to the last election. It had entered the election with Bedri Hamza as its candidate for the office of Prime Minister.

Hamza sees the election result as a mandate to govern: “The majority of the Albanian population is against the government remaining in office,” he said on Monday. “The citizens trust the opposition with their political will, which is why they have strengthened the opposition parties in these elections.” This would be an obligation for the PDK as the largest opposition party to act responsibly and respect the will of the Albanian majority for change. The LDK’s party leader, on the other hand, announced that he wanted to go into opposition after a rather sobering result for his party.

This would mean a stalemate: the current opposition would not have enough votes to form a government. Vetëvendosje, in turn, would also have no coalition partner to make Kurti prime minister again. Kurti, who had declared before the election that he would not enter into a coalition with any party, will probably try to form a government with MPs from a minority party.

Whether the Americans will interfere to lift the LDK into a coalition government with the PDK and AAK remains to be seen.

Markus Kaiser is the project director of Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom in the Western Balkans based in Belgrade.