Maliqi: It is expected that Hamza, as a candidate for prime minister, will be attractive to other parties as well

The Democratic Party of Kosovo has already highlighted its candidate for prime minister in the upcoming parliamentary elections, Bedri Hamza, the current mayor of South Mitrovica, and political analyst Shkelzen Maliqi believes that Hamza can be a competition for Albin Kurti because, he says, he is one of the three mayors from the PDK who are very successful in their municipalities, and while he was finance minister, he had no "stains."

"Hamza is respectable. His candidacy is a good move in terms of democratic procedures because it doesn't always have to be the party president who runs for office. Hamza is expected to become attractive to other parties due to Kurti's 'anti-Americanism,' which damages relations with Kosovo's strategic partners," Maliqi says for Kosovo Online.

Whether there will be early elections or they will be held at the regular time next year, Maliqi believes that this restructuring of the PDK is good and timely because, he says, it's a practice in democratic countries to prepare the team in advance.

"The fight for second place is between the Democratic League of Kosovo and the PDK, and whoever comes second could also be first in a distribution. It is assumed that Self-Determination is losing support, and if, for example, 100,000 LDK voters who last time voted for Kurti return to the pro-Western camp, then it could happen that one of these two opposition parties becomes first and forms the government," Maliqi says.

Regarding what Hamza's campaign might look like and whether he will address the issue of Serbs, our interlocutor says that he assumes the PDK should not campaign against the agreements Kurti signed because, he says, "those are not Kurti's agreements."

"These are agreements signed by Isa Mustafa and Hashim Thaci earlier. Most of these 40 agreements were resolved in 2016, while the remaining two or three issues were contentious. So they cannot be against Kurti and against their predecessors who had better cooperation with Western partners. The Community of Serb Municipalities is the minimum or optimum that can pave the way for a new future for Kosovo, so on the one hand, we have de facto recognition of Kosovo by Serbian authorities without formal recognition because the Serbian Constitution prohibits it, while on the other hand, Kosovo's path to international organizations is cleared," Maliqi points out.