Kosovo facing elections without reforms initiated 8 years ago

The eventual elections that can be held in Kosovo follow Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj's resignation.

Former chief executive of the Central Election Commission, Mazum Bajraliu, says the current legislation, and overall the current election process, has many shortcomings and that electoral reform has been necessary before Kosovo enters another election cycle.

“The mandates of electoral legislation, which are largely inherited by the UNMIK administration, are obvious and can be barriers to any electoral process, in particular in this situation when we have an extraordinary and early process, where there should be no procrastination in the electoral and post-eletorial process because it can cause procrastination even in forming institutions, and it can be avenged in meeting projects and budgetary obligations that the institutions of this country have”, Bajraliu points out.

According to Bayraliu, even despite the commission commitments formed by the country's institutions, to make electoral reform, it failed to close, because, he says, the lack of political will.

“There has been no desire and political will for this political class to reform because the current solutions in the system and electoral processes are such as greatly convening and giving you certain privileges and possibilities to political leadership”, Bajraliu says.

International mechanisms like the European Commission, in annual reports on Kosovo, have raised concerns about the impasse in election reform.

Meanwhile, a constant demand for electoral reform in Kosovo has also had civil society representatives.

Eugen Cakoli from the Kosovo Democratic Institute (KDI) told Radio Free Europe that Kosovo's going to almost every two years in extraordinary elections is the result of the country's own current electoral system.

A current electoral system that has the country enables various political parties to provoke extraordinary elections in frequent periods of time. The failure to conclude the electoral reform process, which began in 2011, as a requirement has been repeated by international and local mechanisms, including here and civil society, tells of the political subjects' incompatibility to tackle electoral reform, since the same as the topic is used only in election campaigns or in pre-election cases in parliamentary elections”, Calcoli says.

Since its declaration of independence, in 2008, Kosovo has not had a stable government that has carried out the constitutional mandate of four years.

In addition, Kosovo governments, made up of the party coalition, have entered no-confidence motions and have been forced to resign, introducing Kosovo into early election cycles.

Chocolate says that a content reform is needed that includes and addresses the needs of legislation and the demands of citizens regarding this process.

The next “Legislation, in case of holding elections, must prioritize the issue of electoral reform, but the same should be done in a literal analysis of the effects that electoral reform can bring, and not by trying to establish specific practices that can go for seven different parties, but in general do not guarantee a literal process of electoral reform, which would then result in the loss of citizens in the election process”, Cakoli says.

So far from meetings held for election reform, it was stressed that this reform is expected to also determine the number of electoral areas, as well as the issue of open or closed lists.

Among the first proposals Kosovo President Hashim Thaci made during these meetings were constitutional changes in terms of electing the president through the vote of the people and reducing the number of MPs, respectively, that the Assembly in the future will not have 120 seats, but 100 seats.

Also, through reforms, Kosovo is expected in the future to recognise both national and constitutional minorities and Montenegrins and Croats. Even these minorities, it is thought, would then seek seats in the Assembly.

However, for the reform vote in the Assembly, especially those constitutional ones, support of minority communities will be needed because double voting will be required, respectively, for reforms to receive 80 deputies' votes and two-thirds of minority votes.