Kosovo ruling party set to come first in election as Kosovo‘s Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s ruling party appeared to secure the most seats in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, but less than needed. The result would be a drop from the more than 50% that Kurti’s party won in 2021.
The news has annoyed the EU and the US, with Brussels particularly frustrated at the Balkan countries independent stance.
This means the Vetevendosje party (Self-Determination Movement) would need to form a coalition to stay in power in a country whose politics are dominated by the relationship with neighbouring Serbia and Serbs within its borders.
Kosovo Elections
Since the breakaway Serbian province declared independence Kurti’s government is the first to finish its full term in office, something it stressed in Kosovo elections as stability.
Kosovo remains one of the poorest economies in Europe, with roughly 12 percent of its population emigrating since 2011.
Kosovo ruling party set to come first in election
Kurti proclaimed victory for his Vetevendosje (Self-Determination Movement) party late on Sunday.
“We are the first party, the winning party that will create the next government,” Kurti told reporters. “We will continue to finish the work that we have started.”
He said he will form the new government without hinting who could be a potential coalition partner.
Who are the main opposition parties in Kosovo?
Opposition concedes victory to Kurti’s party
The election was conducted “without problems that could violate its integrity,” according to the Central Election Commission. It said voter turnout was over 40%. So why aren’t election results already finalized?
Preliminary results published by the election commission, with more than 73% percent of the votes counted, gave Vetevendosje 41.99%, according to AP news agency.
Democratic Party of Kosovo, the PDK, came second with 22.68%.
In third place was the Democratic League of Kosovo, or LDK, with 17.9%.
The LDK conceded Vetevendosje victory on Sunday evening, according to Kosovo news site, Prishtina Insights.
As per Kosovo’s constitution, 20 of 120 seats in the parliamentary assembly are reserved for non-Albanian communities, such as Serbs, Bosniaks and Turks.
The latest elections results in Kosovo
Why aren’t election results already finalized?
Kosovo’s election commission said it had experienced issues with the electronic vote counting system.
Because of this, it was not able to publish the results as expected late on Sunday.
“The CEC staff and … CEC members will be here all night working on entering all the data from the forms of the polling stations manually into the system,” the electoral commission chair Kreshnik Radoniqi told journalists.
“We apologize to all Kosovo citizens,” he said.
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