On March 15, more than a month into the national vote, the Central Election Commission of Kosovo declared the final results of parliamentary elections.
And these results promise some complex post-election arrangements toward forming a government majority, guarantee Belgrade’s indignation, and even cast doubt on whether another parliamentary election will be called, this time a snap one.
Finally, the results
The Central Election Commission emphasizes that the votes have been counted in line with the Law on Elections, completely transparently. The commission pledges to run internal audits to see where the counting process was hampered in order to avoid potential issues in the future.
The CEC explains their long vote count by new rules established by the new Law on Elections and failures in the its online platform (website) operations recorded on the polling day and several days beyond, forcing employees to manually verify each digit before filing data into the system.
Observers point to meticulous focus on ballots that were mailed in amid suspicions of possible fraud.
In addition, the CEC’s extreme thoroughness can be explained by the ambiguous results, expected to result in much controversy and, possibly, a major political crisis.
According to the final outcome of the vote, the Self-Determination Movement (Lëvizja Vetëvendosje, LVV) led by incumbent Prime Minister Albin Kurti sealed 396,787 votes (42.3 percent), and is expected to receive 48 seats in parliament. The ruling party thus failed to deliver on their campaign promise of reaching half a million votes. Self-Determination performed worse than in the previous election four years ago so they will not be able to set up a majority in parliament and form a government on their own.
The election runner-up were the Democratic Party of Kosovo (Partia Demokratike e Kosovës, PDK) with 196,474 votes (20.95 percent and 24 seats).
The Democratic League of Kosovo (Lidhja Demokratike e Kosovës, LDK) came in third with 171,357 votes (18.27 percent, 20 seats).
The AAK-NISMA coalition, formed around the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, showed the fourth best result with 66,256 (7.06%) votes and eight seats.
Kosovo’s national communities are guaranteed 20 seats in parliament, including 10 for the Serbs and 10 for other minorities.
According to the election results, the Democratic Turks Party of Kosovo will bring in two deputies, and the other minority parties that have passed the threshold will have one each. These are the New Democratic Party, the Vakat Coalition, the Social Democratic Union, from which Bosniaks (Bosniaks) entered parliament, and the New Democratic Initiative of Kosovo, the Egyptian Liberal Party, the United Gorani Party, and the United Roma Party of Kosovo.
The leading Serbian party, the Serbian List (Srpska lista), received 39,915 votes, or 4.26 percent, and only nine seats out of 10 guaranteed to Serbs. Another mandate went to Nenad Rašić’s party “For Freedom, Justice and Survival”. Rašić is the Minister of Communities and Returns in Kurti’s government.
Serbian and “non-Serbian”
The result of the Serbian parties was, perhaps, the biggest surprise. The Serbian List and the authorities in Belgrade accuse Rašić of sneaking a seat in the Kosovo parliament thanks to Kurti’s support and Albanian votes.
The Serbian List accused Rašić of being “a favorite of Pristina and the Albin Kurti regime, so he will have votes even where there are no Serbs.”
On March 16, President Aleksandar Vučić claimed at a Serbian government meeting that Pristina had manipulated the election results by adding votes to Nenad Rašić’s party in Albanian districts so that he could receive one mandate out of 10 reserved for Serbs. “Rašić received a significant number of votes in Orthodox Albanian communities,” Vučić said, noting that the Serbian List has no own observers in these districts so it couldn’t participate in the vote count.
Rašić has naturally denied all allegations.
At a joint press conference with Albin Kurti in early March, Nenad Rašić stated that the Serbian authorities were exploiting Kosovo Serbs as a mechanism of control and a destructive element. “They don’t want us to have full integration and live in harmony in Kosovo, on the contrary,” he said.
It is obvious that Serbian officials will be mentioning in external communications the issue of “manipulation of election results” aimed at reducing the mandates of the Serbian List. It can’t be ruled out that Serbian representatives will even raise questions of the legitimacy of Rašić’s mandate, or the entire newly elected Kosovo parliament in general, but this will likely depend on the configuration of the future government majority.
Coalition options
As per the election results, no party will have 61 seats in the 120-seat parliament, so no one will not be able to form a government on its own.
Three options for forming a government coalition are currently on the table.
• The Self-Determination Movement with national community parties, but without the Serbian List, and with individual opposition MPs.
• The Self-Determination Movement with an opposition party or individual MPs from opposition parties.
For example, the new government could be formed by a coalition between Self-Determination and the opposition party NISMA of Fatmir Limaj. In this case, the number of MPs required for a majority would be ensured by engaging individual MPs from the opposition and/or minority parties (excluding the Serbian List).
• Opposition parties (PDK, LDK, AAK, NISMA), possibly with individual MPs from Self-Determination.
However, most analysts assure that the opposition should not count on “defectors” from Self-Determination.
Instead, they are not ruling out engaging the Serbian List in such a majority.
But what the coalition will ultimately be like will depend not so much on Kosovo or Serbia politicians’ negotiating skills but on the positions of the EU and the US
The role of the EU and the US
It is known that both Brussels and Washington are categorical in not accepting the leader of LVV and the incumbent Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti. The reason is that the government policy of Self-Determination, which is aimed at building the statehood of Kosovo, despite the agreements on concessions and compromises previously reached with the mediation of Western partners with the Serbian side.
The main stumbling block is Pristina’s refusal to form the Association of Serbian Municipalities (ZSO). Instead, the Kurti government is actively passing and implementing decisions that shrink Belgrade’s influence on Kosovo and reduce the presence of Serbian institutions. In particular, the Serbian dinar was excluded from cash circulation, branches of the Post of Serbia and a branch of one of the Serbian banks, Banka Poštanska štedionica, were shut down, and the operations of several so-called “parallel” Serbian government bodies in Kosovo were suspended.
Pristina’s steps are constantly criticized by European nations and the United States as worsening the situation of the Serbian community and provoking tension.
It got to the point that Kosovo in recent years, during the rule of Self-Determination, fell under EU sanctions.
For Kurti, the situation was worsened by Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
The excessively radical leader of Self-Determination, back when he was prime minister in 2020, was seen by the team of the then-45th U.S. President Donald Trump as an obstacle to efforts to reconcile Serbia and Kosovo. Then Kurti was quickly dismissed to be replaced by Avdullah Hoti (with the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK), who in September 2020, together with Vučić, signed in Washington the Agreement on the Normalization of Economic Relations between Serbia and Kosovo, which is now referred to as the Washington Agreement. The deal has been partially implemented.
If Trump is willing to achieve a result in resolving the Kosovo issue again, Kurti at the head of the government does not suit him at all, unlike the coalition of opposition parties, PDK-LDK-AAK-NISMA plus the Serbian List.
The ruling majority will also suit the European Union more as Brussels would like to see politicians in the Kosovo government who are more flexible than Kurti. Given that the EU can put direct pressure on Pristina through promises to lift or strengthen sanctions, such position may have a significant impact on the formation of a government coalition in Kosovo.
However, some outlooks say Kosovo politicians will never reach an agreement so coalition negotiations will collapse and snap elections will be announced. According to regional media, currently all options – the formation of another Self-Determination government, the opposition coming to power, and early elections – have approximately the same chances of coming to life.
