Kosovo holds local elections in the north this Sunday under complete boycott by Serbs

Belgrade denounces the elections as a pressure move while calculating its impact on the normalization talks

22 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –

The north of Kosovo is holding local elections this Sunday to elect mayors in its four Kosovar Serb-majority municipalities, whose population, the main party that represents them, Lista Serbia, and the Serbian government from Belgrade, have denounced as a total and absolute affront, as well as an “occupation” exercise that will affect future talks, in a new episode of the rise in tension that has dominated the territory for about a year and a half.

The elections in North Mitrovica, Zvecan, Leposavic and Zubin Potok are taking place precisely because of the institutional vacuum left by the Kosovar Serb mayors who resigned their posts to denounce a campaign of harassment by the Kosovo government, representative of the Kosovo Albanian population.

This resignation was just one more episode of the crisis that broke out in September 2021 between Serbia and Kosovo over vehicle registration powers and which worsened over the weeks.

Northern Kosovo thus became the scene of attacks on EU mission patrols, arrests of former Kosovo Serb policemen and, at the height of hostilities late last year, the erection of barricades by the Kosovo Serb population. This maneuver led Kosovo to deploy its forces on the northern border, a decision responded to by Belgrade with a virtually unprecedented initiative: a request to NATO to deploy the Serbian Army in the area.

The request never came to fruition and the crisis was relatively parked with the reopening of bilateral talks between Serbia and Kosovo, under the auspices of the EU, to try to clarify the status of the north of Kosovar and in particular North Mitrovica, a city and municipality that would become in the hypothetical administrative center of the so-called Community of Serbian Municipalities, an autonomous and subservient entity of Belgrade, still non-existent, emerged from the Brussels treaty in 2013, a “road map” negotiated and concluded –but not ratified– to regulate relations between Serbia and Pristina.

“Nothing has been signed here,” declared the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, after the tripartite meeting in March with the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, and the top European diplomat, Josep Borrell, and after recalling the enormous complexity of normalization negotiations to bring together positions separated by centuries of history and war.

Prime Minister Kurti has considered that the elections are “essential for the functioning of the system and its institutions”, and has reached out to the Serbian population to participate in the elections. Vucic, on the other hand, has spent weeks denouncing Sunday’s elections as a day of “shame”, a pressure maneuver carried out with the collusion of Brussels to sign the treaty, and an “occupation” exercise that will lead to the investiture of accepted mayors by Pristina in the Kosovar Serb north.

The EU foreign spokesman, Peter Stano, expressed his disappointment at the Kosovar Serb boycott on Friday before the Kosovar channel RTV21, before recalling that the elections were originally scheduled for December and were postponed to facilitate harmony. Vucic, this Saturday, did not give an inch.

“No one participates here until the Community of Serbian Municipalities is established. Ten years ago, the EU put its signature there. If you are disappointed, I can only tell the Serbs to disappoint you even more,” he asserted in statements collected by the chain B92 before recalling the still open wounds of the NATO campaign against the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the capital Belgrade, during the Kosovo war.

“You kill our people, and on top of that you say that it saddens you that we do not participate in the elections. He is the spokesman for the EU. He should be ashamed,” he asserted.

CONTAINERS BY SCHOOLS

The ratification of the boycott occurred last Thursday when the former mayor of Leposavic and one of the most prominent names in Kosovar Serb politics, Aleksandar Jablanovic, confirmed that he would not stand in the elections. The withdrawal of Jablanovic, founder of the Kosovo Serb Party, extended the boycott of Lista Serbia to the other major representative party of this population.

“Our main rival is the Serbian List, not the Belgrade government. The elections cannot be held under these conditions,” Jablanovic declared after warning that these elections “have already transcended their local character.” “Right now what is at stake is whether the Serbs will continue to have a presence here or, on the contrary, the Kosovo institutions will assume their supremacy in the area,” he warned in comments collected by Balkan Insight.

Thus, only one Kosovar Serb candidate will contest the elections, Sladjana Pantovic, in the municipality of Zvecan, as an independent. The elections thus remain in the hands of practically Kosovar Albanian candidates in four municipalities where, two years ago, Lista Serbia won an average of approximately 90 percent of the votes (in Leposavic it reached 97.1 percent).

In the face of this, the Pristina-based Election Commission has remained uncompromising. “The ballots are already printed,” he declared on Thursday after being asked by Radio Free Liberty if Jablanovic’s name would be removed from the pages, before reiterating that the elections will be held at all costs.

So, this coming Sunday, Kosovar Serbs who decide to ignore the boycott will have at their disposal 26 portable containers, arranged to house polling stations, in the midst of a relationship crisis with no end in sight and of enormous importance to everyone in their relationship with Brussels: the good neighborliness of Serbia and Kosovo is key to the security of the entire Balkan region and the EU places this normalization as a condition to continue taking steps towards the accession of both to the European bloc.