The change of the mayors in the north is a lengthy process, with possible obstructions at every step

Although the Central Election Commission of Kosovo has opened the way for collecting signatures within the petition for the dismissal of mayors in three municipalities in the north, obstructions could be expected in the upcoming phases of this process, just as there were at the beginning. According to Kosovo Online's interlocutors, the entire procedure could last up to six months.

Even though the residents of the north attempted to submit the request for the dismissal of mayors as prescribed by the Administrative Instruction issued by the Kosovo Ministry of Administration and Local Government, it was clear that not everything would go smoothly, as evidenced on December 5 when they were prevented from doing so in all four municipalities. Currently, the requests have entered the procedure in North Mitrovica, Zubin Potok, and Leposavic, while the process in Zvecan is stalled because the initiators continue to shuttle between the triangle of municipalities, the Central Election Commission, and the ministry to finally be verified as the initial group authorized to collect signatures.

Our sources highlight that a potential obstacle in the coming period could be the fact that the number of voters in the north, according to the Kosovo register, is not realistic. Thus, if a referendum for the dismissal of mayors takes place, a much larger number of votes "in favor" will be required than the actual 50 percent of voters. Another danger they see is the possibility that the Constitutional Court may declare the Administrative Instruction unconstitutional at any time, meaning that the entire initiative would fail. Many in Pristina, including the former head of the CEC, Valdete Daka, had warned about the unconstitutionality of the instruction.

Veselin Radovic, a lawyer from Leposavic, who submitted the request for the dismissal of Mayor Lulzim Hetemi to the President of the Municipal Assembly of Leposavic in early December, told Kosovo Online that he believed enough signatures for submitting the petition could be collected within 15 days, if not faster, and that he would inform the public soon about the start of the signature collection.

"Our request has been approved by Kosovo institutions, and now the next step is to collect signatures. We are in consultations with certain relevant actors, so we will inform the public soon about when we will start collecting signatures", Radovic said.

He emphasized that after the handover of materials for the mayor's dismissal, they had been registered as a group that had initiated the petition.

"The deadline for collection is 30 days, and within that month, we will decide when to start and when to finish submitting the petition. The people are united, and we will probably do it in 15 days, if not faster", Radovic added.

According to the CEC data, the total number of eligible voters in the municipality of Leposavic is 13,441, and out of that number, the required 20% of citizens to sign the petition is 2,689. In the municipality of Zubin Potok, the number of eligible voters is 6,732, so 20% of voters in this municipality is 1,347, while in North Mitrovica, the number of voters is 18,199, and 20% constitutes 3,640, as recently stated by CEC spokesperson Valmir Elezi.

However, Milica Andric Rakic, the Program Manager of the NGO New Social Initiative, told Kosovo Online that collecting 20% of signatures to launch the petition was only the first step, and the one after was much more complicated, namely, the local referendum in which 50% of registered voters must vote for dismissal, under conditions where the voter numbers according to the Kosovo registry were "inflated".

"According to the Law on Local Self-Government, 20% of signatures are just the first step, and after that, a local referendum must be organized, where 50% of registered voters must vote for the mayor's dismissal. This is a much more complicated step, which is difficult to achieve not only because of the conditions we are in and significant political tensions but also because the voter lists are inflated", Andric Rakic stated.

According to the Kosovo registry, there are 45,000 voters in the municipalities in the north, and as Andric Rakic says, that is not a realistic number.

"Just compared to the Serbian voter list, there are 10,000 more. In the Serbian voter list, we had about 35,000 in the last elections. It is clear that these numbers are 'inflated', and actually reaching 50% of that number realistically means reaching about 70-80% of voters who can exercise their voting rights. This is very complicated to implement", she said.

Regarding the apparent delays of Kosovo institutions in the dismissal process, our interviewee says that the deadlines have been exceeded and that the initial delay was due to the lack of knowledge about the procedure by local officials and institutions.

"This is a new procedure, but it is not a sufficient excuse for what we saw at the very beginning of the initiative - the refusal to register the request and then some minor demands to specify to whom the information about starting the petition is addressed, and so on. These are simply not the citizens' obligations, and it should not have caused a delay of, it seems to me, a few days", Andric Rakic says.

She noted that the process was going much slower than it should.

"A part of it is the lack of knowledge about the procedures by local officials, and the other side of it may be a deliberate delay in the process by Kosovo institutions, specifically the Ministry of Administration and Local Self-Government. I don't believe that the CEC will overly politicize this process because as soon as the conditions were created for the procedure to be transferred to the CEC, some things happened more quickly. Still, it is evident that this will be a complicated process and will take longer than necessary. The assessment of the international community, even before the start of the process, was that under ideal conditions, it should take about 180 days for this procedure to be completed from start to finish", Andric Rakic emphasized.

As she says, there is an idea that the two sides could meet halfway by having mayors resign after collecting 20 percent of the signatures.

"But whether this will happen is a big question mark, and this is a way in which this can be further delayed. After these 30 days that have started to run, at least in the municipality of North Mitrovica, within which 20 percent of the signatures need to be collected, and in case after that, there is no resignation but a demand to go to a local referendum, in that case, it can last until mid-year", Andric Rakic concludes.

Coordinator of the National Convention on the EU Chapter 35, Dragisa Mijacic, says that the collection of signatures within the petition for the removal of mayors in northern Kosovo will be a form of pressure on the authorities in Pristina to organize new elections, but he does not believe that this will happen in the near future. As he says for Kosovo online, even the first step to initiate the petition was accepted with difficulty and the next one will likely be accompanied by various obstructions.

"It is also questionable whether the Administrative Instruction on the procedure for initiating a petition provided by the Ministry of Local Self-Government is in line with the Constitution or not, so one of the obstructions could even be that the Constitutional Court, in some process, shows that the instruction is unconstitutional and that, therefore, the initiative fails", Mijacic notes.

He says that the Serbs in the north have been organized by municipalities to collect signatures, but it remains to be seen how it will be accepted in Pristina.

"There is a lot on the agenda at the moment, so there will probably be various technical, administrative, and legal obstructions to prevent elections from being held in the northern municipalities in the foreseeable future", our interlocutor notes.

In response to the question of how meaningful mayoral elections are without new elections for municipal assemblies, i.e., councilors, Mijacic says that it would certainly be good to organize elections for both mayors and councilors, and there might be some possibility of holding general elections.

However, he emphasizes that this means nothing if the CSM is not formed, which is of interest to the Serbs from northern Kosovo and other parts of Kosovo. Negotiations on the formation of the CSM, he believes, may be even more important than organizing the elections themselves.

"What is most crucial at the moment is for the Kosovo Government to implement the European Commission's conclusions from June 3, which require the relocation of mayors from municipal buildings and police units from those facilities. I would remind you that the EU has introduced some kind of punitive measures against Kosovo because this has not changed", Mijacic emphasizes.

According to the procedure outlined in the Administrative Instruction, the deadline for collecting signatures to submit a petition is 30 days from the delivery of the necessary documentation. The collected signatures are then submitted to the Chairman of the Municipal Assembly, who is obliged to forward them to the CEC within five days. The CEC verifies the signature list and informs the Chairman of the Municipal Assembly and the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government after the verification. If, after verification, signatures are found from individuals who are not registered voters in a particular municipality, their signatures will be invalidated.

If it is determined that the petition did not receive support from at least 20 percent of the registered voters, the civic initiative is given the opportunity to supplement the request with additional signatures within ten days. Once it is determined that the request is supported by at least 20 percent of the voters, a vote on the dismissal of the mayor from office is organized.

The current mayors in the four municipalities, as a reminder, were elected in the elections held on April 23, 2023. Erden Atiq was elected in North Mitrovica, Lulzim Hetemi in Leposavic, Ilir Peci in Zvecan, and Izmir Zeqiri in Zubin Potok. The elections were boycotted by the Serbs, and only about 3.5 percent of voters turned out to the polls.