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Election Results : Kosovo Premier Thaci Declares Victory After Election Win |
Kosovar Prime Minister Hashim Thaci’s
political party won the second parliamentary elections since
independence from
Serbia with a promise to improve
living
standards in one of
Europe’s poorest states.
Thaci’s
Democratic Party of Kosovo had 31 percent with
almost all the votes counted, the Kosovo Electoral Commission
said on its website today. The Democratic League of Kosovo led
by former Pristina Mayor Isa Mustafa was second with 26 percent.
Turnout was 43 percent.
With unemployment at 35 percent and output per capita at
about a 10th of the European Union average, Kosovo must attract
investment to replace foreign aid and remittances as its main
economic drivers. Serbia must also mend ties with its former
province to move closer to EU membership, even as it vows to
never formally recognize its 2008 secession.
“All the peoples, all the parties have sent the world the
message that democracy in
Kosovo works,” Thaci, who would begin
a third term should he win the right to build a new coalition,
told reporters in the southern city of Prizren just after
midnight, according to public broadcaster RTK. “We will go
forward to develop our country further.”
The Self Determination movement came third with 14 percent,
followed by the Alliance for Future of Kosovo with just below 10
percent, results showed. The Serbian List, one of the parties
representing ethnic Serbs who make up less than 10 percent
Kosovo’s 1.8 million people, got 4 percent.
Coalition Building
“Thaci will probably offer to make a large coalition with
the parties led by Mustafa and Haradinaj to secure a more stable
government than he had before the elections,” Nenad Djurjevic,
executive director of Forum for Ethnic relations, a a political
research company in Belgrade, said by phone. Thaci wants to rely
less on Serb lawmakers, which would make it easier to achieve
the formation of a Kosovo army, Djurjevic said.
Opposition from ethnic Serbs over a government attempt to
create an ethnic Albanian-dominated national army torpedoed the
previous parliament, which also suffered from disputes over the
sale of state-owned telecommunications company Posta dhe
Telekomunikacioni i Kosoves Sh.A.
Thaci Accusations
Thaci must win the support of 61 lawmakers in the 120-member assembly to have a majority. Thaci was part of and later
led the Kosovo Liberation Army, a paramilitary group that fought
Serbian forces before independence.
Serbia is seeking an international probe into Thaci and
other KLA commanders, who were accused in 2010 in a report by
the
Council of Europe of trafficking the organs of Serb
prisoners in 1999, at the height of the conflict when a NATO
bombing campaign was driving Serb forces from the region. Thaci
has rejected the allegations as a fabrication meant to smear his
government.
Since its secession, Kosovo has wrangled with Serbia over
property rights, power supply and trade issues. Serbia has
accused Kosovo of oppressing its compatriots in what many in the
Balkan state consider to be the cradle of Serb heritage.
With the EU demanding Serbia normalize ties with Kosovo as
part of its membership path, the government in Belgrade last
week urged all Serb voters in Kosovo to take part in the ballot.
Electoral authorities reported no major disturbances during
voting yesterday. Some Serbs weren’t allowed to vote in a few
polling stations in central Kosovo because they had only Serb
identity documents, despite an earlier agreement that all
residents be allowed to cast ballot, Serb state broadcaster
RTS
reported after voting ended.
The 2010 general election in the landlocked Balkan nation,
Europe’s second-poorest country according to the
World Bank, was
marred by irregularities, while violence disrupted some voting
in a local ballot last year.