Rakocevic and Gogic: Albanians at the head of the municipalities in the north will be a shell without content

The inauguration of Albanian mayors in four municipalities in the north of Kosovo, after the elections in which the turnout was slightly higher than three percent and in which 13 Serbs voted, the interlocutors of Kosovo Online see as the height of injustice, political absurdity, and nonsense, and as an open message to the Serbs. that they are unwelcome in Kosovo.

They indicate, however, that the reach of the newly established authorities in the north will be small and short-lived; that their decisions will not be accepted by the Serbs, and that it will depend on the authorities in Pristina whether they will try to impose them by force.

The elected mayors of Leposavic, Zubin Potok, and Zvecan took their oaths today, and last week Erden Atic took over that position in North Mitrovica.

The locations and "decor" of today's oath-taking of Lulzim Hetemi, Izmir Zeqiri, and Ilir Peci were obviously carefully chosen in order to send another message to the Kosovo Serbs, but also to Belgrade, according to our interlocutors.

None of the three new mayors in the north took the oath in the municipal buildings in these places but in the surrounding villages with a majority Albanian population.

The flags of Albania and Kosovo were displayed at the places where they took office.

Zeqiri took the oath in the village of Caber, near Zubin Potok, and Hetemi in the elementary school in Saljska Bistrica, near Leposavic.

The new mayor of Zvecan, Ilir Peci, took the oath at the elementary school "Isa Boletini", in the village of Boletin. For his statements after the inauguration, he chose another controversial location, so he addressed the media next to the grave of Isa Boletini, whom the Albanians see as the main figure and a fighter for liberation from the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Serbia and the Kingdom of Montenegro, and the Serbs remember him for numerous crimes and the expulsion of the Serbian population from Ibarski Kolasin after 1901, which included murders, rapes, and robberies.

President of the Association of Journalists of Serbia, writer and journalist from Gracanica, Zivojin Rakocevic tells Kosovo Online that "the last local elections in the north of Kosovo and Metohija are a perfectly accurate picture of the Kosovo system and represent the height of political nonsense."

"Everything that has been failing these years, every injustice and political absurdity can be seen today in the north of Kosovo. Elections in containers, under rifles, today's inauguration, flags of Albania and Kosovo, and Isa Boletini showed the end of all hope for democracy. Taking the oath is the enthronement of the permanent separation of the Serbs and Albanians," Rakocevic says.

He states that the international community has accepted that nationalism and ethnocracy have defeated all Western values and that the perfectly rewritten Kosovo laws serve to make those who are threatened disappear from life, politics, and the system.

"Everyone told us to accept reality, now everyone can tell us to run as far away from this reality as possible because the system has failed and everyone has to seek protection in their ghetto world. Instead of talking about thousands of the Serbs returning to the cities of Kosovo and Metohija, we see Albanian mayors who were elected by dozens of people to rule the Serbian majority and Serbian places," our interlocutor points out.

Rakocevic indicates that the newly elected mayors basically cannot do anything practical and vital.

"They won't even be able to clean the streets. The symbols they carry with them and the oaths on Boletini’s grave will be repeated by many, already at the beginning of next year, in Germany and Switzerland. All this nonsense will fit into one German visa, and the Kosovo system will remain an empty shell without content and meaning."

Political analyst Ognjen Gogic tells Kosovo Online that Pristina and Albin Kurti wanted to persevere to the end in their intention to form local authorities in the north, even though its reach in majority Serb areas will not be large, or technically or politically.

"The fact that they organized oath-taking in the surrounding villages is a reflection of their impotence. That iconography, with the flags of Kosovo and Albania, is a form of compensation for the fact that they could not do it in the municipal buildings, because all of this is still humiliating for those municipal mayors and councilors, which they prepared for themselves," he states.

He adds that with this, of course, they wanted to send a certain message to the Serbs, that they will have to accept some new reality that the central government from Pristina is questioning in the north as well.

"The message is that the Serbs may be welcome, but they should accept that they are under the Albanian flag. Not even under Kosovo, but under Albanian. This demonstrates that these are some new conditions under which people will live in the north. In my opinion, it is still a pure bluff. They wanted to show that they had established their authority in those municipalities, but realistically they do not have the capacity to lead those local governments. "All this is short-lived because the Serbs will not accept it," Gogic says.

The Albanian and Bosniak communities that supported Pristina's intention to form the government in four municipalities after the illegitimate elections are few in the north, he points out.

"They can't establish and run a local government in the north. They don't even have appropriate educational profiles. The Serbs see that, and that's why they practically completely ignored the inauguration of the new mayors. If it were something serious that would worry the Serbs, they would organize and protest against those inaugurations. But the Serbs don't take what they are doing seriously at all and they didn't even want to give importance to it," Gogic says.

He adds that the imposition of Albanian rule in the north is a threat.

"We will see what happens next. The new Albanian mayors do not have the capacity or personnel to form teams that will handle local affairs. The decisions they make, whether political or technical in nature, such as taxis, and opening hours, will not have the support of the local Serbs. I see a potential danger there and I would not be surprised if in that case, Pristina tries to impose it by force, to rely on repressive authorities, the special police and thus try to ensure the execution of the decisions of the local authorities," our interlocutor says.

Regarding the request of the US ambassador to Kosovo, Jeffrey Hovenier that the mayors in the north take on a technical but not a political, role, Gogic says that Kurti does not see new leaders in the municipalities in the north in the way suggested by the US diplomat.

"Kurti wants them to be seen as legitimate representatives with full capacity. They will probably try, especially in North Mitrovica and Leposavic where Self-Determination has a mayor, to pretend that they have the conditions to make and implement decisions. But I think it will soon be seen that it will not work. The issue of opening the bridge over the Ibar in North Mitrovica will be a key point where it will be seen what the intentions of Pristina are, and in which direction it wants to "push" the situation in the north. The decision to open the bridge and the attempt to implement it would be a direct provocation, a 'finger in the eye' for the Serbs in the north, it would be a step towards confrontation," Gogic says.

Gogic sees the fact that people who won a few hundred votes came to power in the municipalities in the north as a mockery of democracy, the political system, and procedures.

"What Kurti did is a kind of parody of democracy. This may not be a coincidence, because Albin Kurti's policy is to somehow cancel Ahtisaari's plan, which came to life on the ground, and the Brussels Agreement. He wants to undermine the entire government system that exists in Kosovo from the inside. If Kurti were to ask, the municipalities in the north would not even exist in the way they exist today, and with this, he wants to completely make them meaningless," Gogic concludes.