Savic: It’s not impossible for new parliamentary elections to be held alongside local elections

Zoran Savic, an associate of the NGO Aktiv, told Kosovo Online that since, even two months after the parliamentary elections, there is still no agreement on the formation of the future government of Kosovo, it is not impossible that new elections could be called to coincide with the local elections scheduled for the fall—an option some politicians and analysts have pointed to.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if new elections are announced for the summer. At that time, many people from the diaspora will be in Kosovo, and we know that Self-Determination received most of its votes from the diaspora in the previous election. I’m not ruling out any possibility, including the scenario of combining new elections with the local ones in the fall, so it’s quite likely that we may end up spending the entire year on elections,” said Savic.

According to him, holding both new parliamentary and local elections at the same time would suit the Self-Determination Movement.

“They didn’t achieve the goal they set during the campaign—to win 500,000 votes—so they are certainly expecting a higher turnout. Holding another election would work in their favor so they could see how to form a coalition afterward. Right now, Self-Determination has a major problem forming a coalition because of what they said during the campaign. We can see that even Abdiqiku from the LDK refused to discuss a coalition with them,” Savic noted.

Still, he says it’s currently hard to assess whether Self-Determination or the opposition parties would perform better if new parliamentary elections were combined with the local ones.

“The time between the two electoral processes would be very short, so the numbers would likely be similar—if not the same—as in this election,” he said.

Commenting on the statement by PDK leader Memli Krasniqi that if Albin Kurti fails to form a government, the PDK would do so within 48 hours, Savic said he’s not sure it could be done in two days, but nothing is off the table.

“At some point, Kurti might even form a coalition with the PDK—nothing is excluded. We should wait until April 15, until the parliamentary session, and then see how things develop. But truly, every scenario is possible, because it’s already been a month and a half without a government,” said Savic.