BELGRADE - Dusan Janjic, director of the forum for ethnic relations, has said on Friday that the Serb voter turnout in the early parliamentary elections in Kosovo-Metohija (KiM) will not be high due to a short time frame and a boycott of the campaign in the north of Kosovo.

"I expect that the turnout will be similar to the one in local elections, even down by several thousand voters, but no way it will exceed 45,000, which practically means that Serbs will be present in both the parliament and government," Janjic said in a statement to Tanjug.

According to Tanjug, the Serb List could be the strongest in the parliament, without participation in the Kosovo government.
Janjic noted that the three strongest Albanian parties reached an agreement in principle to forge a broad coalition after the elections, which will include the Democratic Party of Kosovo led by Hasim Taci, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) headed by Ibrahim Rugova, and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo led by Ramus Haradinaj.
"One should expect the formation of this broad coalition backed by the international community, whose priority now is the rule of law in Kosovo, the fight against crime and war crimes, and only a strong government can ensure that," he explained.

Janjic noted that representatives of the international community were not very active this time in relation to the problems facing Serbs in the electoral process as they thought that the Brussels agreement (on the normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina) binds Serbs to adhere to Kosovo's laws and Constitution.

The Kosovo Central Electoral Commission (CEC) altered the law in the course of the election process and introduced a threshold for minority communities, and also decided that the ballots should bear the symbols of Kosovo's statehood which was unilaterally proclaimed by ethic Albanians in the Serbian province.

Serbian officials and representatives of Serbs from KiM warned that changing the rules during the electoral process is unacceptable, and noted that the CEC decision violates the Brussels accord, under which all agreements are status neutral, but representatives of the international community remained silent on the issue.

Therefore, the Serb List boycotted the election campaign. However, after the call by the Serbian government and officials, it decided to take part in the elections and win as many seats as possible so that its representatives could fight for their rights and interests of the Serb community in the Kosovo parliament.

The director of the Forum for Ethnic Relations agrees with the Serbian government's stance that it is better for Serbs to go to the polls and have their own representatives in the parliament, and noted that the election rules are such that if they boycotted the elections, the government in Pristina could then appoint Serb MPs it wants, even those who did not run in the elections.