20 Aug 14

As Kosovo’s post-election deadlock continues, the constitutional court this week will hear more arguments over which political bloc has the right to name the speaker.

Pristina

Kosovo’s Constitutional Court is due to hold a hearing session on Thursday when the two major political blocs will present additional arguments on which one has the right to nominate a candidate for the post of speaker of the Assembly.

The hearing is expected to pave the way for a court decision that could end a political stalemate, which arose after the Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, complained about the election of an opposition politician, Isa Mustafa, as speaker.

Riza Smaka, a constitutional law expert, said if the court failed to resolve the dispute, the country would have to hold new elections – only three months after the last ones.

“If the court decides that only the PDK has the right to nominate a candidate, and if it does not get enough votes [in parliament], the country will go to new elections,” he explained.

On 18 July, one day after Mustafa was elected to the post, the PDK filed a complaint to the court about the procedures.

Prime Minister Hashim Thaci’s PDK holds 37 seats in the assembly and is the largest single party in parliament.

Because of this, it insisted that it had the right to name the speaker of the assembly.

The PDK said that the opposition parliamentary group established after the elections by the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, AAK, and a third party, NISMA, was not a legitimate parliamentary bloc.

“We know they have created this parliamentary group, but that was not a legitimate thing to do,” Xhavit Haliti from PDK said on the day when he sent the complaint to the court.

Under the constitution, the nominee for the role of speaker should come from the largest parliamentary group.

However, the post-election coalition of the LDK, NISMA and AAK groups 47 deputies, ten more than the PDK, and duly nominated Mustafa for the post.

Almost three months since the general elections, the election of the speaker would enable the assembly to proceed with electing a new government.

Both the PDK and the opposition nationalist Self-Determination Movement have hinted about the possibility of calling new elections.

Recently, the British Ambassador to Kosovo, Ian Cliff, told Serbia’s Tanjug news agency that new elections would not be in Kosovo’s interest.