Peace over petition for dismissal of current Kosovo northern municipalities

When less than two weeks are left before the signing deadlines for the removal of the current mayors of the four northern municipalities are expired, there is still no official announcement concerning the continuation of this process, which has been through so far with much uncertainty.

Initiative groups of each municipality have submitted requests to mayors of municipal municipalities, who are hosters of this process, to organise the petition that would enable the departure of North Mitrovica chairmans Zubin Potok, Leposaviqi and Zvecan, thereby paving the way for new local elections.

Northern Mitrovica Municipal Assembly Chairman Nexhat Uglanyn said in a conversation with the Voice of America that the group that has filed a petition for the removal of this municipality's chairman has not yet announced the location where the signing collection will take place, though administrative instruction envisions such a thing.

According to administrative direction, Article 6 points, they are obliged to warn the municipal assembly of the use of public space, the institution where they hold the petition. We are ready for co-operation, and today we will announce that we are willing to provide space to the municipality institution for the service of petitioning”, he said.

Although he says there has been no contact with the initial group since submitting a petition request in late December, Mr. Uglanin expresses his conviction that the signatures will be collected on time. Under the administrative directive, signatures should be collected within 30 days after the application is submitted, and in case of failure the initiative group may require extending the deadline for another 15 days.

We know that they are willing to make petition obligations for the Serb majority community, and we are expecting, of course, because they were holidays, and they have a new year tomorrow according to the Gregorian calendar, after the holidays, according to reports we have from the field on January 15th to January 18th will be announced and carried out the petition”, says Mr. Wang.

At the beginning of September last year, the Kosovo government adopted the administrative directive paving the way for announcing new elections in northern Kosovo through the departure of current mayors of municipalities through a petition. The government's decision followed a period of high tensions here as Albanian mayors who emerged from the April 23rd elections boycotted by Serbs were sent to northern municipal offices with police support amid opposition and violent protests in May.

We're in a situation without a way out right now. The Kosovo government is reluctant to take a step forward and make the first move. On the other hand, Belgrade is obviously trying to promote through local Serbs to the international community the Kosovo government to attract current mayors, and this is not, of course, happening in practice. So this is the situation of all parties involved in this process”, Miodrag Milicevic told Voice of America from the non-governmental organisation AKTIV, headquartered in northern Mitrovica.

He says progress in this process is very slow as he insists that the chairmanial resignation would be the fastest way to full deployment of the situation in the north.

“Petition is one of the solutions, but as you can see and hear perhaps from different sources, there is confusion due to various ways of interpreting administrative direction. Eventually progress is very slow and I think it's not fair to be left the main burden on citizens, but the solution should come from the government and the interested political parties”, says Mr. Milicevic, while praising that without overhauling the situation in the four northern municipalities, it cannot be talked about extending the situation, nor about progress in implementing the agreement reached in Ohrid last year for normalising relations between Kosovo and Serbia.

Local Power Management Minister Elbert Krasniqi said on Wednesday that Kosovo has shown constructive parties, stressing that the European Union would have to lift the punitive measures imposed on Kosovo due to tensions in the north.

The “Masses continue to be unfair, they were unfair at first because they did not address the side, which has also caused tensions in the country's north. However, like Kosovo we have taken all actions to fulfill our obligations. The administrative guideship is the concrete step that enables us to move towards early elections in the country's north”, Mr. Krasniqi said.

Organising elections in the four northern municipalities is one of the three main requirements Western diplomacy has made to Kosovo in the function of reducing the situation in the area.

Under the administrative directive, the request for the removal of a municipality mayor should be signed by at least 20 per cent of voters with the right to vote in it. To get the mayor out through the petition, 50 percent plus one of eligible voters should vote, and in case of failure,