The staggering cost of elections: How Kosovo's stability at stake for political armchairs

A parliamentary session for reviewing international agreements that could significantly improve the lives of citizens was invited Friday, but the decision on new elections seems to be making such opportunities stalled.

Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani has issued the decree for the distribution of the Assembly, naming it a constitutional obligation. According to her, the decision came after MPs failed to elect the new president within the deadline, while the state chief's failure until March 5th has led the country towards early elections.

Economic expert Safet Gerjaliu estimates that at a time when developed states try to strengthen the stability and welfare of citizens, Kosovo is being tested with institutions.

According to him, the political failures leading to new elections constitute a direct blow to the economy.

Until developed countries try to find methods to strengthen the state, protect it from an evental attack, to be with citizens economically and socially, to preserve their state's values. In Kosovo it is experimented with the state and what has happened with the election of the president or president of Kosovo, or with their non-election and going to elections, is really a damage that needs to be analysed in many dimensions... In the economic aspect that really is a next blow to Kosovo's detriment. Debts in commercial banks in Kosovo, by citizens and businesses, have achieved so much that it endangers macro-friendly stability because close to 80 percent of Kosovo's GDP today is on different loans from businesses and citizens. When this adds to the fact that we have an increase in interest that is affecting the slow down of private sector development processes every day. When we have close to 700 million euros of withdrawal from bank cards or overdraft, and when all of this is added that we have inflation that was close to 5.8 percent in February, it best testifies to what Kosovo is in and what awaits its citizens”, Gerjaliu points out.

In addition to the overall economic impact, Gerjaliu stresses that elections themselves have a considerable financial cost.

According to him, only organising elections by the Central Election Commission can cost the state budget about 9m to 10m euros. While he points out he's being abused by public money.

Kosovo's evental elections alone will cost in some dimensions on the economic side. The first one will be, meaning, what will cost through the CEC close to 9m to 10m euros. In the second row, there will be expenditures covering political parties themselves. Third row covers candidates for deputies themselves. And this is a campaign of public money abuse. In the first place, using infrastructure and in the second order by distributing now without any control, whether in social aid or in various attempts indirectly, legally to buy votes through a social policy that has witnessed in the past. Indeed, abuse of public money is the greatest sin, because today Kosovo citizens need support as never before, but not this way by diabolic political background, calculated in vote buying and eventually winning elections that will be held within this year”, Potencon Gerxhaliu for Cosovapress, broadcast Periscope.

Meanwhile, the other economic connoisseur, Adem Qorroll, is also critical of the current institutional and economic situation in the country.

According to him, Kosovo faces serious social and economic problems, while citizens live with very low incomes.

He cites that a large portion of the population lives at around two euros a day, while pensions remain at very low levels.

Kosovo already has ahead of itself what we have warned because we have institutions that don't have as much as health insurance, military and police, nor poor citizens, because to go to elections with a 120-euro pension, with extreme poverty and 40 percent of the population living in a class of 2 euros a day, and go to elections with minus 6 million euros budget and state money being misuseded in this way, and yet this has political status to be part of our institutions, and our citizen looks at 2 euros per day, and see what we really are going to be painful and who are the institutions that we are doing with the government's purpose, that we have no longer the focus of the citizens, that we have no longer the focus of the government, that we have the focus, that we have no sense of the focus of our economy, that we have no focus, and that we have no sense of our citizens, and that we have the right that we have the right that we have the right to have the right that we have the right to have the right of the right is the right that the right of the right of the right to say.

Qorroll points out that going to elections in these circumstances, when the budget faces shortages and when citizens face poverty, is a decision that can aggravate the situation even more.

And what it's all about is that they have a good income, that they're comfortable, that they get a lot more and more budget, and that they fill their appetites now not with 51 and that's now 70 percent. It's more of a struggle that they benefit themselves than a citizen lives, because to go into elections with a population of 400,000 a year and to close firms every day. Only Kurti Government can do that. We pray that citizens will now reflect because they will live even poorer and will still go to the polls, even though they will be voted again, they will still go to the elections because they don't know how to work, they know how to spend and fill their appetites on votes you give to”, highlights Qorroll.

On Thursday, the Kosovo Assembly has failed to elect the president.

Chief Parliamentary Albulen Haxhiu said she cannot continue with the vote, since 80 MPs are not present. Until he has announced that he is immediately addressed to the Constitutional Court with a request to suspend constitutional deadlines for electing the president. Ousmane, who is now on the run, is assessing how long the deadlines have passed, so he announced the separation of the House. /Periscope