Brnabic: Elections in Kosovo on Sunday are a twilight of democracy

The Prime Minister of Serbia, Ana Brnabic, stated today that the local elections, which are being held on Sunday in four municipalities in northern Kosovo, represent "the final twilight of democracy," RTV reported.

"Elections represent the final twilight of democracy and of any illusion of the rule of law on the territory of Kosovo and Metohija since the provisional institutions in Pristina took over, with the generous assistance of the international community. I am even somewhat happy because it is finally the end of a farce that we have been witnessing for years," Brnabic told reporters in Dublin when asked to comment on the upcoming elections.

Brnabic, who is on a two-day visit to the Republic of Ireland, emphasized that less than two percent of the population is participating in the elections, which are taking place a few days after the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Brussels Agreement, the first agreement on the normalization of relations, from which, as she said, Pristina had not fulfilled a single word.

"With its signature, the EU guaranteed the fulfillment of the points of the Brussels Agreement, and since the beginning of last year, Pristina has been directly violating and denying basic rights to Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, on which the international community and the EU as guarantor, are now silent and only issue statements to the media," Brnabic said.

She repeated President Vucic's appeal for Serbs in Kosovo to remain peaceful, to show the hypocrisy of Pristina in its true light, and to show how far the "quasi-democracy" that the EU and the US justified had come.

"Serbs have watched with dignity, waited for the rule of law and democracy, and the reaction of the international community, and this is what they have received. Let Pristina and the international community celebrate Sunday as a holiday they both cherish," Brnabic concluded.

She also said that Viola von Cramon's statements on the rule of law in Kosovo and Metohija were shameful.

"Viola von Cramon is an Albanian lobbyist, she has never pretended to be anything else. Her statements on the rule of law in Kosovo and Metohija are shameful and an insult to common sense," Brnabic said, mentioning that there had been over 300 physical attacks on Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija for which no one had been held accountable.

"On the territory of the international community's and the Quint countries' protege, so-called Kosovo, the elections are being held in a police station, directly under the auspices of security forces, so you can 'freely' choose who you want to vote for," she said.

Referring to the statement of the US Special Envoy for the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, Gabriel Escobar, that the CSM will be formed on May 2, she said that the same thing had been said in December, January, and now it's already May, and as she said, it would not happen at the next meeting in Brussels.

She explained that every time they said that the CSM should be formed in accordance with the so-called "Kosovo Constitution," that was not the CSM guaranteed by the Brussels Agreement, but another organization that the international community wants to make with Pristina, and not the CSM.

"The CSM was agreed upon by the Brussels Agreement in 2013 and further acts, including the 2015 agreement, which states the CSM's competencies. They will not form it; if they wanted to, the CSM would have been formed ten years ago," Brnabic said, adding that this was one of the reasons why the EU was losing popularity in central Serbia because "no one believes in European values anymore."

She stated that Serbia is always open to dialogue because it must maintain peace and stability.

"We must persevere in the dialogue no matter how difficult it is, and thanks to the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija for enduring all of this, because if we gave up on the dialogue, and if we had given up earlier, we would not have seen the degree of hypocrisy that we will see on Sunday in the elections," Brnabic said.