25 Sep 14
Four months on without a new government, delays in forming key institutions are impacting on the economy, on talks with Serbia and on progress with the European Union.
Nektar Zogjani
BIRN
Pristina

Almost four months on from the general elections, Kosovo is stuck in political deadlock as a result of the failure initially to elect a speaker for the assembly and then proceed with the election of a new government.

Ibrahim Rexhepi, an economic expert, said the country was losing a good deal result of delays in forming a government.

According to him, looking at the budgetary spreadsheets, it is only “the salaries and per diems that are going well, while there has been significant decline in capital investments.

“Economic development is suffering from inertia,” he said.

“The consequences will be noticed in the coming months because many things that were supposed to happen during the course of this year are being dragged out,” he added.

Last week, BIRN reported that 16 different agencies were waiting for the Assembly to complete their boards of directors, and some are unable to function because there is not a quorum on their boards.

Another issue that Rexhepi mentioned is the 2014 budget review. According to him, it is parliamentary practice in Kosovo to have a mid-year budget review, but in the current circumstances this cannot take place.

Meanwhile, the privatization of some important enterprises, such as the post and telecommunications company, the Brezovica winter resort, and others, is also on hold, he noted.

Kosovo is still due to elect a speaker, although the biggest parliamentary group, the Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK - the only party with the right to nominate the speaker - does not have the sufficient number of votes to do so.

The courts threw out the election in July of the opposition leader, Isa Mustafa, as speaker and declared that the PDK had the sole right to nominate a candidate.

However, the court did not specify how the assembly should proceed in case the biggest parliamentary group failed to elect the speaker.

Last week, the PDK candidate, Arsim Bajrami, won only 44 votes out of 116 deputies that were present in the session.

The PDK has only 37 seats in the assembly, and so far has failed to lure any of the other parties into a coalition.

On the other hand, the bloc comprising the LDK, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, AAK, the Initiative for Kosovo, and the Self-Determination Movement, with 63 seats, could easily elect a speaker.

Immediately afterwards, the chair of the session, Edita Tahiri, adjourned the session.

Political analyst Naim Rashiti believes that the failure to elect new institutions will also have a negative impact on Kosovo’s hopes of visa liberalization with the European Union.

“Kosovo was doing well in the spring in continuing the visa liberalization dialogue, which was planned to end by the end of the year. Now this process is on hold for almost another year,” he said.

Rashiti noted that besides snags in the visa liberalization process, there will also be delays in the EU-led talks between Kosovo and Serbia and on implementing agreements reached earlier in these negotiations.

“The worst is that we still do not know when we will have our institutions established,” he said.

The Kosovo institutional deadlock started early this year, as Hashim Thaci’s government failed to push through some key decisions he promised for a while, including transformation of the existing Kosovo Security Forces into the Kosovo Armed Forces and reserved seats for ethnic minorities in parliament due to the lack of votes in the parliament.

A broad agreement to dissolve parliament followed talks between political leaders that took the country to early elections.

The major political parties have not voiced any serious interest in holding new elections, but in the given circumstances it is the Democratic Party of Kosovo who could benefit more from new polls.

The PDK could boost its votes if it persuaded its former coalition partner, New Kosovo Alliance, AKR, to run together with it. The AKR failed to get the 5 per cent of the votes it needed to get into parliament.

Analyst Leon Malazogu said he doubted a new election would change anything. “It is not in the interest of Kosovo citizens,” Malazogu said. “I think that we would arrive in the same position again after more elections.”