Kosovo’s government has arranged for today’s Serbian parliamentary elections to be held in Kosovo.
Authorities have coordinated with the OSCE mission in Kosovo to organize the June 21 election, in accordance with previous experiences since 2012. Serbian elections have been regularly held in the country with about 93 percent Albanians. The rest of the population is composed of 12 ethnic minorities. The vast majority of them are Serbs, who boycotted the last census.
Kosovo Serbs have dual citizenship, and they have the right to vote in Serbian elections. However, ethnic minorities usually vote by mail or through embassies in countries where they live, and not at polling stations.
Kosovo’s constitution stipulate that only the country’s Central Election Commission can hold elections within its territory. However, the government has allowed the OSCE to organize the Serbian elections in Kosovo.
This election is being held amidst record numbers of people infected with Covid-19, and a few weeks after President Hashim Thaci refused to hold local elections in two municipalities in Kosovo due to the pandemic.
Prime Minister Abdullah Hoti said that he had allowed elections to take place based on past precedents.
The Hoti government is dependent on votes of the Belgrade-controlled Serbian List party for its survival.
Goran Rakic from the Serbian List, also Kosovo’s Deputy Prime Minister, called on Serbs to vote for President Aleksanda Vucic’s Progressive Party of Serbia, as the only way for Serbs to survive in the region.
“I call on the citizens to come out in large numbers and give their vote because this is the way to survive and how to protect ourselves in this region,” Rakic said. “I call on my supporters to go out and vote for the best, that is, for the Progressive Party of Serbia,” he added.
Vucic’s party is expected to have a easy win in this election.
Kosovo’s largest party, opposition’s Vetevendosje (LVV) has blasted the government’s decision to organize Serbian elections in their territory.
In a press statement, they claimed that this election violates the country’s integrity and sovereignty. LVV added that the Hoti government keeps succumbing to Serbia demands since it came to power: it lifted reciprocity measures in trade with Serbia, it stopped asking for membership in international organizations, and now is holding elections for Serbia.
“This way of voting, when one state opens polling stations in the territory of another state, is unparalleled […] There are Serb voters in other parts of the region as well, but nowhere else can Serbia open polling stations, not even in Republika Srpska,” LVV stated.
The governments of Kosovo and Serbia will sit in negotiations focused on economy in Washington next weekend on June 27.
