Gudzic: Institutions are not functioning because of Self-Determination, new elections on the horizon

Historian and analyst Aleksandar Gudzic said that Self-Determination has no coalition potential and that Kosovo will hold new elections by the end of the year.

“The responsibility for the situation Kosovo finds itself in lies exclusively with Self-Determination and Albin Kurti, who are the largest party in Kosovo and enjoy the greatest support among voters. And what we are seeing now, the announcement of a request for an advisory opinion, has actually already been seen. It is a scenario that repeats itself year after year, and there is nothing new about it,” Gudzic told Kosovo Online.

As he said, Self-Determination and Albin Kurti have lost their coalition potential and shown themselves incapable of enabling the institutions to function.

“Practice over the past few years has shown that Self-Determination functions best in that extra-institutional arrangement, in that temporary institutional regime, and they will continue to do so,” our interlocutor said.

Regarding the unrest in Pristina, Gudzic said that the verdict of the Specialist Chambers was a cold shower for Albanians.

“As for the protests in Pristina, in my opinion they are the result of a narrative that has been carefully built for years about the infallibility of the KLA, the virtues of the KLA, and the heroic struggle of the Kosovo Liberation Army. And the verdict of the Specialist Chambers for Kosovo actually brought this issue to the surface and was a cold shower for Albanian public opinion in Kosovo. In the 1990s and 2000s, Kosovo was not only the scene of an inter-ethnic conflict between Serbs and Albanians, but also of an intra-Albanian conflict in which different political options fought against one another on the ground. And that is something that weighs on Albanian public opinion, and in that context I also view the protests,” he said.

Gudzic believes that Kosovo will go to new elections by the end of this year.

“By the end of the year, we will definitely have new elections because, in my opinion, Self-Determination and Albin Kurti have no coalition potential and cannot agree on who the president should be,” he added.