Fri 16 Nov 2007 - Tossing a Coin: Anticipating Election Results in Kosovo

Landing in Kosovo barely a week ago was as exciting as always: just as we were descending into Prishtina airport, there was a power cut and the entire city disappeared below us. Some of the passengers, members of the so-called ‘international community’ most likely working in Kosovo, burst out in laughter. I assume the Kosovars on the flight found little comfort in the fact that some people found their energy problems amusing.

Central Election Commission and OSCE
The 2007 elections scheduled for November 17 were announced by the Secretary General’s Special Representative (SRSG) Joachim Rücker remarkably late, on August 31. This left less than three months for the Central Election Commission (CEC) and the OSCE to organize the elections. Political parties, on the other hand, have been demanding elections to take place, so some of them had already started campaigning months before. In a few days’ time, citizens of Kosovo will be electing representatives for their National Assembly, Municipal Assemblies, and will also for the first time directly elect their mayors.
Major political parties have entered into an agreement with SRSG to remove the issue of status from their campaigning in the upcoming elections. Though a definite improvement from previous elections when the future status of Kosovo was the only issue on the table, and whose outcome all major Albanian parties essentially agreed upon, at the moment the status question is pretty much like an elephant in the room, without anyone talking about it.

Atmosphere
The atmosphere in Prishtina does not really reflect what one would expect from a capital city a week prior to elections. Aside from the large number of posters and billboards plastered all around the city, there is little indication of rallies, info stands, or public outreach of political parties. The part of the population most excited about the upcoming elections are the international institutions busy with its organization: OSCE, in cooperation with local Electoral Commission, and the several hundred observers from Council of Europe flown in especially for the occasion. This is also the first time that CEC is in charge of elections organization, with OSCE taking an advisory role, so it is a test of local capacity in this democratic exercise.

Novelties
There are several novelties in this year’s elections. Although they were a major point of contention in the last elections, when OSCE and USAID were split over introducing open list voting versus maintaining the closed lists, in these elections open lists were introduced without dispute. They are expected to connect politicians better to their electorate, and to ensure higher transparency and more competition between different policies and programs that individuals are running on. In the previous elections, OSCE won the issue that time, and lists were kept closed, ballots fairly simple, and it was left to parties’ discretion to nominate their representatives to the Assembly based on percentage of votes gained in the elections. This time, however, lists are open, and politicians are running individualistic campaigns, trying to win votes on personal appeal. This in turn means more than a hundred names on the ballots, where voters are expected to circle ten of them. Major discussions are going on these days within CEC and OSCE concerning potential invalid ballots (those circling more than ten representatives, for example), and how to deal with them. It seems everyone expects the voter turnout to be remarkably low, less than 50%. Add to this the problem of invalid ballots, and you’ve give yourself a nice headache.

Kosovo's political scene
What are some of the changes on Kosovo’s political scene since the last elections? The leading party LDK has fractured and the new party born out of this divorce is Nekhat Daci-led LDD (Democratic League of Dardania). The split came as result of internal party voting on new leadership: last year’s LDK congress even ended in a shocking fist fight between the supporters of two contenders for the leadership position. Furthermore, it is somewhat surprising to see Ramush Haradinaj grace AAK posters throughout Kosovo, whilst knowing he is on trial in The Hague. PDK and ORA are still present and running in pretty much the same make-up as before. All have been actively campaigning for a few months now and rumors are flying that PDK has hired external foreign consultants for their campaign. A definite newcomer to the political scene is Behgjet Pacolli and his party New Kosovo Alliance (AKR). Pacolli is a Kosovo-born successful businessman who made a fortune abroad and his party capitalizes on his background: their program stresses employment and boosting the economy as the main necessity for Kosovo and their leader the main man to accomplish it.

Engage Kosovar citizens
Trying to engage Kosovar citizens in talking about elections is an almost futile exercise: no one seems to be interested in talking about them. A few that I spoke with openly admit that they do not plan to vote. When asked why, I get the answer: “All politicians are the same.” Though they are not talking about status now but about their party programs, these are still in their infancy: Kosovo political parties are far away from being mature, established, internally democratic and structured, and ideologically coherent parties. Party assistance they received in the last eight years has tried to steer them in the direction of defining themselves along ideological lines, to re-create the European political experience of having Social Democrat, Liberal, and Conservative parties. However, there is still no true left-right party system division in Kosovo, as all parties seem more or less centrist, playing it ‘safe.’

It is expected that Kosovo Serbs will not take part in these elections: the pressure from Belgrade instructs them to boycott expression of their political rights. If the dominant perception of many Albanians is that what’s on offer in these elections does not constitute rich choice or offer alternatives, the turnout will indeed be poor. Considering the six million € invested by the international community in its organization, and the round-the-clock work of its international staff on elections, low turnout would constitute a failure on the part of the international community and its efforts. However, as I’ve been told by some people, you never can tell with people here: they just might have a last minute change of hearts and show up to cast their ballots on Election Day. As with tossing a coin, these elections could go either way: the coin could land heads or tails. One should bear in mind that waiting for democracy around here is like waiting for Godot: the coin could also very well spin out of control or disappear forever in the ‘gutter.’

Posted by Maja Nenadovi, PhD student Universiteit van Amsterdam on 16-11-2007 - 11:18:02