Pavkovic: Albanian mayors in the North showed no understanding for the problems of the Serbian community

The ethnic Albanian mayors who won the elections two years ago in the northern municipalities of Kosovo have shown no understanding for the majority Serbian community there—its problems, wishes, and aspirations—and have instead acted independently in line with the interests of the central government, said Milos Pavkovic, a fellow at the Center for European Policy in Belgrade, in a statement to Kosovo Online.

He recalled that the elections held two years ago were criticized as illegitimate due to the extremely low turnout and said that the mayors have proven throughout their mandates to be explicitly antagonistic toward the Serbian community, which was evident in the concrete actions they took.

"Some examples include signing initiatives to join the Community of Albanian Municipalities, the issue with notaries—only notaries of Albanian ethnicity were appointed—and the refusal to accommodate the initiative for holding extraordinary local elections or to remove the mayors. All of these moves demonstrate that these mayors did not represent the spirit of the people or the will of the majority. Instead, they were there to fill a political vacuum and to provoke the Serbian community as much as possible. They had no legitimacy and cooperated exclusively with the central government, completely ignoring the wishes and demands of the majority population living there," Pavkovic pointed out.

Given that new local elections are expected this fall, Pavkovic said that if the Serbian community participates, a change of mayors will almost certainly occur, and new ones will be appointed. However, he also noted that the issue of reversing decisions made over the past two years in the four northern municipalities remains problematic.

"I assume some decisions will be reversible, while others will not. There will be resistance from the central authorities, but that’s a matter for a later stage—once the local elections are held and if we indeed get new mayors in these municipalities," Pavkovic concluded.