Andric Rakic: Constitutional Court decision prevents majority dictate

Program Manager of the NGO “New Social Initiative,” Milica Andric Rakic, told Kosovo Online that with its latest decision on the unconstitutional appointment of Nenad Rasic as Vice President of the Kosovo Assembly, the Constitutional Court clarified that a candidate for vice president from the Serbian community must be proposed by a majority of MPs from that community.

Andric Rakic recalls that previously the Serb List had proposed all the candidates it wanted, and that the presiding officer, after three rounds of voting for each candidate had been completed, decided that the existence of another candidate not proposed by the Serb List meant that they were refusing to nominate him and that a draw could be initiated.

“Essentially, the Constitutional Court has now said that the presiding officer cannot make such a decision and that, if a majority of MPs follow the procedure and submit in writing the candidate they want, a draw cannot be initiated. In other words, the court is seeking some kind of agreement or the lowest common denominator between a candidate acceptable to the majority of MPs from the non-majority community and one who can receive majority support from all MPs in the Assembly. How this will be applied is now the key question,” Andric Rakic emphasized.

Based on the strong reactions of representatives of the Self-Determination Movement to the Constitutional Court’s decision, as well as announcements by Mimoza Kusari-Lila, Andric Rakic believes it can be inferred that the current plan of the Self-Determination Movement is to select the deputy speaker of the Assembly from Serbian ranks in the same way as during the previous election.

“Although they know that this is now unconstitutional and that they should wait for the Serb List, they will probably complain again, but as they have now said, they will argue that the decision has no retroactive effect, that the constitution of the Assembly will be considered an accomplished goal, and that only the vice president needs to be replaced. This seems to be the strategy of Self-Determination. Whether this will be possible remains to be seen from the full court decision,” she said.

Andric Rakic stresses that such reactions by the ruling party are merely part of a campaign attacking the Constitutional Court over a decision that prevents an effective majority dictate.

“What the court hinted at in its previous ruling as well is that, had it not decided as it did, that the presiding officer cannot decide when to initiate a draw, in the future we could potentially have constant scenarios in which the Assembly majority essentially selects the candidate, because you could block the election of candidates proposed by the majority of MPs from the Serbian community and wait for a draw to be initiated in order to choose whoever you want. And essentially, the Serbian representative would not be chosen by Serbs and Albanians, that is, by the majority of MPs, but only by those who have the ability to initiate that draw whenever they want and decide on their own that the majority of MPs has refused to nominate someone,” Andric Rakic concluded.