Kosovo Assembly Deputy Speaker, Xhavit Haliti, said today that during this week there will be another session in the Kosovo Assembly. According to him, Kosovo institutions are functioning normally. Haliti said that the incidents in the Assembly have ended and that such situation will not continue anymore. According to him, there is room for discussion in regards to all matters for which it is deemed to have been violated.
The meeting of the Kosovo Assembly committee for reviewing candidates for members of the Constitutional Court has failed for the second time in a row due to the absence of quorum. The chairman of the commission, Assembly President Kadri Veseli, said that they only have one more day to select the candidates or risk having the process start all over again. Veseli also said that the meeting of the Assembly presidency will be held very soon to discuss the date of the new plenary session.
Members of the civil society, marched today in Pristina to protest against the violence at the Assembly of Kosovo. They appealed to postpone the Assembly session planned for today.
Blocking of the Assembly and opposition actions are being disapproved by the chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for Kosovo, Jacque Miniane.
Leaders of the opposition parties ended their meeting with the President of Kosovo, Atifete Jahjaga, where they reiterated their positions that they would not set back or sit around the same table with the government, if the latter does not withdraw signatures from the agreements for the Association/Community of Serb majority municipalities and demarcation of the border with Montenegro.
Kosovo Assembly Deputy Speaker Xhavit Haliti told the news site that the initiative of President Atifete Jahjaga to meet the political leaders and discuss how to overcome the current political crisis was unnecessary. According to him, this is not within President’s responsibilities. Even though, Haliti said that if these meetings have positive effect, then it might help in reducing the tension in the Assembly.
According to statistics presented by the head of UNICEF office in Pristina, Laila Omar Gad, six out of ten children in Kosovo have experienced violence and while the government has improved legal infrastructure, it needs to invest more in children. Gad made the comments in a conference in Pristina about the findings of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS). “Kosovo has a young population with 34 percent being under the age of 18 and half of the population under the age of 24.
Vetevendosje MP Ilir Deda has sent a letter to the Kosovo President Atifete Jahjaga, Assembly President Kadri Veseli and Prime Minister Isa Mustafa urging them to call a roundtable of all political parties in an effort to reach a consensus for overcoming the current situation. If this opportunity is not seized, warns Deda, it will be too late and “the consequences for our country and our people will bring shame to future generations.” Deda says this inter-party dialogue should be without conditions, rigid stances and without excluding possible consensual solutions.
President of Kosovo Atifete Jahjagamet yesterday the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) director for Europe Laurent Corbaz and the head of the mission in Kosovo Agim Gashi. In the meeting, Jahjaga expressed appreciation for the continued support that the ICRC has offered to the institutions of Kosovo and in particular for the assistance it has given to the Kosovo government’s commission for missing persons and for the intermediary role it has played in the meetings of the joint working groups of Kosovo and Serbia, to resolve the fate of the missing persons.
The Basic Court in Pristina issued a one-month detention period for five Vetevendosje activists arrested on Monday after violent protests against the arrest of former Vetevendosje leader and MP, Albin Kurti.