It seems like holding the Serbian elections in Kosovo will be a new nightmare for the Brussels negotiators. Due to the announced elections in Pristina, in addition to intensified rhetoric of political parties, the chances of Belgrade to neutrally organize elections, with the mediation of the OSCE, are less and less. Kosovo politicians agree in their assessment that Serbs can vote, but as a diaspora.
“Kosovo Serbs with dual citizenship may vote in Serbian elections, but voting is done as required by domestic legislation in these cases. That means that Serbia alone cannot organize their parliamentary elections in Kosovo,” said Petrit Selimi, Kosovo deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Slobodan Petrovic, deputy prime minister of Kosovo said that Serbs and all those who have Serbian citizenship are eligible to vote in the Serbian parliamentary elections , and that the model of voting will be agreed between Belgrade and Pristina .
Nenad Rikalo, member of the Kosovo Central Election Commission underlines that at the beginning of the Brussels process was agreed that all those who are on the electoral roll and want to vote, may also vote in parliamentary and presidential elections of the Republic of Serbia. “I do not think that this time there will be a big difference. Last time, the OSCE helped, and was moderator of the process,” says Rikalo.
The main issue yesterday in Pristina was that elections for the Kosovo parliament could happen at the same time as Serbian elections. It would be extremely problematic, from the technical organization (how people will vote at the same time for one and for the other elections) up to the campaign. The main issue is in which way Serbian parties, whose representatives were recently at their headquarters in Belgrade, at the same time, will call on Serbs to vote for their parties and election list “Srpska”, which is also accounting on positions in Pristina parliament.
The problem for the Serbian parties that will participate in the elections is that reform of the electoral law is not made, so if the elections will be held before the adoption of the new law, Serbian parties could be reduced to a total of ten members in the Kosovo parliament. That’s less than what they had. “Reform is the obligation that we have towards international partners, to first pass a law on elections. If this is not done, the elections are questionable. Because, as a party you cannot have more than ten members, regardless of the number of votes,” says Slobodan Petrovic.
