Pristina, Kosovo (AP) – The Kosovars began to vote on Sunday in parliamentary elections considered a key test for Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, whose ruling party achieved an overwhelming victory four years ago.
This is the first time since independence in 2008 that Kosovo’s Parliament completes a full four -year mandate.
It is the ninth parliamentary vote in Kosovo since the end of the 1998-1999 war between the Serbian government forces and the separatists of Albanian ethnicity who expelled the Serbian forces after an 78-day NATO air campaign.
Serbia does not recognize the independence of Kosovo, proclaimed in 2008.
The vote will determine who will lead the Kosovo team in the negotiations to normalize the ties with Serbia, which stagnated again last year. Those conversations, mediated by the United States and the European Union, did not occupy a prominent place on the agenda of any party.
About two million eligible voters are summoned to vote in 941 electoral schools. They will choose 120 legislators from almost 600 candidates from 27 political groups. An independent candidate is also presented.
The Kosovar Parliament has 20 seats reserved for minorities regardless of electoral results; Ten of which are for the Serbian minority. The vote began at 06:00 in the morning, according to Kreshnik Radoniqi, head of the Central Electoral Commission. It was planned to end at 06:00 in the afternoon.
The Kosovares abroad began to vote on Saturday in 43 diplomatic missions worldwide, where some 20,000 voters of the almost 100,000 citizens of the diaspora deposited their tickets in person. Others sent their votes by mail.
The leftist party is considered to vetevendosje! o Kurti Self -Determination Movement is the favorite, but the majority necessary to govern alone is not expected to win, leaving open the possibility that the other two contestants join if he fails to form a cabinet.
The other applicants are the Democratic Party of Kosovo, or PDK, whose main leaders have been accused of war crimes by the Hague Court, and the Kosovo Democratic League, or LDK, the oldest party in the country and that lost great Part of his support after the death in 2006 of his leader, Ibrahim Rugova.
The parties made great promises on increasing public wages and pensions, improving education and health services, and fighting poverty. However, they did not explain where the money would come from, or how they would attract more foreign investment.
Kosovo, with a population of 1.6 million people, is one of the poorest countries in Europe with an annual gross domestic product of less than 6,000 euros per person.
Kurti has collided with Western powers for some cabinet actions last year, such as the prohibition of using Serbian dinar and transfers from Serbia to members of the Serbian minority in Kosovo that depend on the social services and payments of Belgrade.
Washington, Brussels and the stabilization force led by NATO, KFOR, have urged the government in Pristina to refrain from unilateral actions, fearing that the inter -ethnic conflict of revive. The EU suspended the financing of some projects almost two years ago.
Brussels has established conditions for the gradual lifting of the temporal measure, linked to Kosovo taking measures to display tensions in the north, where most of the Serbian minority lives.
Kosovo has also suffered after Washington imposed a 90 -day freezing in the financing of different projects through the United States Agency for International Development, which has been key in promoting the country’s growth.
The KFOR has increased its presence in Kosovo after last year’s tensions and added more for the period of parliamentary elections. A team of 100 observers of the European Union, 18 of the Council of Europe and about 1,600 more of international or local organizations will supervise the vote.
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.
This article was published by LLAZAR SEMINI on 2025-02-09 03:11:00
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