Vetevendosje Eyes Success in Kosovo Local Elections (Balkan Insight)
After performing strongly in the general election, the opposition movement hopes to replicate this success in October’s local polls.
Kosovo’s opposition Vetevendosje party may prove a strong contender in the municipal elections set for October 22, after the general elections this June showed a surprising spike in its popularity.
With the Vetevendosje [Self-determination] movement coming almost neck and neck with the other two main political blocs in the general election, many believe it stands a good chance in the local elections for Kosovo’s 38 municipalities, including the capital Pristina.
Pristina-based political analyst Behlul Beqaj told BIRN that the general election results showed that people want new faces in politics. “It should be expected [in October] that the voters will remain interested in political parties and leaders that are not worn out, while support for parties and leaders who have become tired over the past 17 years will decline,” Beqaj said.
Vetevendosje won 30 of the 120 seats in parliament in the general election, almost doubling the number of seats it held from the 16 it won in the last general election, in 2014.
The achievement is all the greater, considering that Vetevendosje ran alone in the election, unlike the big party coalitions gathered around the other two key contestants, the Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, which won 39 seats and the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK which also won 30.
For years, politics in Kosovo has been dominated by the PDK and the LDK.
However, Ismet Kryeziu, director of the Kosovo Democratic Institute, an NGO that monitors elections, told BIRN that drawing parallels between trends in general elections and the next local elections is not that easy.