Serbia Conditions Disputed Elections in North on Serb Municipalities Body
A man walks in front of election posters in Laplje Selo, Kosovo, October 2021. EPA-EFE/VALDRIN XHEMAJ.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said Serbia will insist that extraordinary local elections for four Serb majority municipalities in the north of Kosovo be held after the long-promised Association of Serb Municipalities is established.
“We just want, and from today we will warn all those who support the holding of such elections, fake, fraudulent or as they would say for some other elections around the world, sham elections, that these are the worst example of exactly such elections … and we will ask that elections are held after the formation of the Association of Serbian Municipalities,” Vucic said.
Vucic met Kosovo Serb representatives on Thursday in Raska, Serbia, in a three-hour live broadcasted meeting. Serbian PM Ana Brnabic and almost the whole government was present. During the meeting, in the parts in which Vucic was not addressing the audience, Kosovo Serbs – politicians and residents – complained about specific everyday life problems they have.
Some of them, of financial nature, Vucic was “resolving” in real-time.
In Pristina, the Central Election Commission has not decided yet about the location and number of polling stations in the four municipalities.
On Wednesday, a meeting was postponed and CEC Spokesperson Valmir Elezi told media that they are preparing material. Usually, schools serve as polling stations in Kosovo but the CEC is finding it difficult to get access to school premises.
New meeting scheduled for Friday afternoon.
On Thursday, the head of the Kosovo parliament, Glauk Konjufca, hinted that new tensions might arise in the north, as the date of elections comes closer.
“Since the elections [in the north] are coming closer… it is not by coincidence all this is happening, because there is a clear tendency to destabilise this part of Kosovo before the April 23 elections,” Konjufca told the Pristina-based news agency Kosovapress on Thursday.
Ramush Haradinaj, head of the opposition Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, AAK, suggested on Thursday that elections in the north may have to be postponed.
“I call on the government, President and [other] institutions to take the situation in the north seriously and decide on an election postponement,” Haradinaj told a parliament session.
“Last time, we didn’t manage to hold elections [in the north]. The process now is not sustainable. We know the agenda of Serbia and Srpska Lista, the pressure that is being put on citizens there,” Haradinaj added.
Extraordinary local elections in North Mitrovica, Zubin Potok, Leposavic and Zvecan are scheduled for April 23.
They were supposed to be held on December 18 but, after a series of violent incidents and pressure from the international community, Kosovo decided to postpone them.
After one incident, Dejan Pantic, a Serb former member of the Kosovo police force was arrested, on suspicion of an attack on municipal election commission offices in North Mitrovica.
The crisis erupted over Kosovo’s decision to stop recognising Serbian-issued vehicle plates and after Kosovo Serb representatives staged mass resignations from Kosovo institutions at the beginning of November.
The only Belgrade-backed Kosovo Serb political organisation, Srpska Lista, announced they will boycott the elections, both in December 2022 and in April.
In the last local election, in 2021, in all four Serb majority municipalities the vast majority of the votes were won by Srpska Lista. According to the Kosovo Central Election Commission, they won 97.1 per cent of the votes cast in Leposavic, 81.54 per cent in Zubin Potok, 96.04 per cent in Zvecan, and 89.17 per cent in North Mitrovica.
The remainder of votes in these municipalities went to some ethnic Albanian parties and much smaller Serbian civic initiatives or independent candidates.
