Nikolic: These elections in Kosovo will also be marked by the lack of a “healthy pre-election campaign”

The president of the NGO Communication for the Development of Society (CSD) from Gracanica, Ivan Nikolic, warns that these local elections in Kosovo, like all previous ones, will not be marked by a “moment of a healthy pre-election campaign,” while the focus of Serbian parties will be on a range of problems that increasingly burden the Serbian community.

“I do not see this pre-election campaign being significantly different from the others, especially when it comes to the Serbian community,” Nikolic told Kosovo Online.

Commenting on the start of the campaign for local elections, Nikolic pointed out that within the Serbian community, the Serbian List, as one of the strongest parties, will act in a similar manner as in previous campaigns, but will also highlight yet another way in which the rights and freedoms of Serbs in Kosovo are being undermined through the “strange moves” of the Central Election Commission.

“I am convinced that the direction of its activity will be very similar, except that now I expect an emphasis on yet another violation of the rights and freedoms of the Serbian people through a series of ‘strange moves’ by the Central Election Commission—both regarding the registration of new voters and the deletion of old ones. The fact is that this can seriously affect the election result, the distribution of councilor seats, and even the choice of mayors in minority municipalities,” Nikolic emphasized.

He pointed out that Gracanica is a specific case because Albanian parties have united there in an effort to win as many councilor seats as possible.

Nikolic said that, essentially, these elections too will be marked by the absence of a “healthy pre-election campaign.”

“What I miss is that moment of a ‘healthy pre-election campaign,’ where parties would present their programs and ideas for solving concrete problems on the ground. This may happen to some extent through the media, but the fact is that on the ground there will likely be other tactics—persuasion and perhaps drawing attention to the shortcomings of ‘the others,’ in this case, political competitors. It will certainly be interesting to follow the pre-election campaign,” this analyst said.

Asked what citizens would like to hear or be promised during this campaign, Nikolic stressed that the Serbian community, particularly in majority-Serb municipalities, is “seriously burdened with a number of problems that grow larger every year.”

“I think citizens want to hear solutions to concrete problems: how to improve the economic situation, how to resolve the problems caused by the mass closures of Serbian institutions, how to engage the international community more in all processes—because, in a way, they relied on it and expected it to exert more serious pressure on the Kosovo side, on Albanian politicians,” Nikolic said.

He added that the key question for Serbs in Kosovo is “what next.”

“Citizens want to hear how things will unfold in the future—whether healthcare and education are at risk, what ideas exist to reduce youth migration. Citizens have a range of questions, from general to the most personal ones: employment, solving infrastructure problems. But I think somehow those answers are missing. They are too general, the rhetoric is standardized, and I think the citizens are perhaps not very satisfied,” Nikolic concluded.