20 Nov 14

The leader of the LDK has announced that his party will lead the next government in coalition with Hashim Thaci’s PDK.

Nektar Zogjani and Nate Tabak
BIRN
Pristina

The last time Kosovo’s two largest political parties got together in government, it did not end well. But, late on Wednesday, President Atifete Jahjaga announced that the Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, and the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, were getting back together – four years after their governing coalition fell apart in 2010.

LDK leader Isa Mustafa, the former Mayor of Prishtina, announced on Facebook that the LDK would lead the next government, implying that he intends to take the Prime Minister’s post. Thaci’s PDK has yet to comment on the deal.

“Bearing in mind the situation the country faces, following a lengthy discussions, we agreed in principle with Hashim Thaci, leader of the PDK, to reach an agreement on a coalition government,” Mustafa wrote.

The deal promises an end to five months of political stalemate following the June 8 general elections.

EU and American officials recently piled pressure on Kosovo leaders to reach a deal on forming a government amid growing concerns that the EU-led dialogue with Serbia was being neglected, and that the economy was suffering in the absence of a government able to approve budget revisions.

The deal offers current Prime Minister Thaci’s PDK political survival: It allows the party to stay in power, which had seemed all but impossible after the LDK and other former opposition parties formed a coalition after the June elections.

For Mustafa’s LDK, the deal represents a risky gambit for relevancy and power a year after its humiliating loss of control of the capital.

The LDK had agreed to play second fiddle in a coalition of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, AAK, the Vetevendosje [Self-determination] movement and NISMA, which united to prevent Thaci and the PDK from getting a third mandate.

Although the largest party in the coalition, the LDK agreed to let Ramush Haradinaj of the AAK become the next Prime Minister.

Mustafa would be the Speaker of Parliament, with the promise of the Presidency once Jahjaga leaves office in 2016.

However, a ruling of the Constitutional Court in August spoiled that agreement, annulling Mustafa’s election and confirming that the PDK, as the largest single party in parliament, had a right to the post.

In the aftermath of the court ruling, which effectively allowed PDK to stall the formation of a government indefinitely, the coalition failed to reach a new power-sharing agreement.

Mustafa demanded the Prime Minister’s post, if he could not be Speaker, which Haradinaj refused to cede.

“From the beginning, the PDK knew the weak points of the bloc, which was the leaders’ interest in getting power, not ousting the PDK. As Thaci knew this, he blocked the process, which led to serious rifts inside the bloc,” Fisnik Korenica, an analyst from the Group for Legal and Political Studies, observed.

If the LDK leads the next government, presumably under Mustafa, it is unclear how much real power the party will have. The PDK has 37 seats in parliament while the LDK has only 30. The parties have reportedly agreed to a division of ministries, however.

The deal is already proving a tough sell for the LDK. Many of the party’s supporters detest the PDK and had high hopes of breaking its seven-year hold on Kosovo politics.

“This definitely breaks the hearts and the trust of our LDK voters,” one LDK MP, Vjosa Osmani, said.

“Such a decision is at odds with the will of the electorate because in hundreds of meetings we had all over Kosovo they told us that their only request was not to go into government with the PDK.”

The LDK pulled out of a governing coalition with the PDK in October 2010 after party leaders said their voices were not being heard. The coalition had nearly collapsed the previous year.

The coalition, which emerged after the 2007 elections, was always a tough sell for both parties.

The founders of the PDK were former chiefs of the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, including Thaci himself, and the party’s support base was in rural Kosovo, although that is starting to change.

The LDK, on the other hand, was founded by a pacifist intellectual, Ibrahim Rugova. Always a more urban party, its core support lay in Prishtina.