Smajlovic: The number of candidates from Kosovo on electoral lists is not important; the positions they hold are crucial

Whether Kosovo is important to a party is not so much evident in the number of people on the lists from Kosovo but rather in the positions these candidates hold, journalist Ljiljana Smajlovic assesses for Kosovo Online.
Smajlovic notes that very little has actually been said about Kosovo in this campaign, even though, she adds, the Serbian Progressive Party has succeeded in the last ten years in making everyone ritually swear allegiance to the country's territorial integrity, and few opposition figures dare to say, "We've lost Kosovo, forget about it".

"Most parties are politically compelled to speak before the elections about defending Serbian presence in Kosovo and Serbian rights to Kosovo. Whether Kosovo is important to a party is not so much evident in the number of people on the lists from Kosovo but rather in the positions these candidates hold. The Serbian Progressive Party at least has the President of the Serb List from Kosovo high on its list; he will certainly enter parliament. On the Serbia Against Violence list, you have an opposition figure from Kosovo Slavisa Ristic, who is in 97th place. I don't think even the biggest optimists within Dragan Djilas' camp planned for Ristic to ever enter parliament", Smajlovic says.

She adds that the parties are not interested in people from Kosovo, not even those parties that have made a platform out of it and claim they would be much more loyal to Kosovo than Vucic.

"Even right-wing parties whose platform is to be much fiercer advocates for Kosovo than Vucic, they don't actually go into details, they don't have people down there. Everyone knows that people in Kosovo mostly vote for Vucic and his party, and then, a few days before the elections, they go there to take pictures so that no one can say they weren't interested at all, but in reality, I don't believe they are fighting for the votes of those people down there. We don't even know how many voters from Kosovo will be able to vote. Some take them for granted, others pretend to care about them. If I were to live in Kosovo now, this election campaign would drive me into deep despair and sadness", Smajlovic emphasizes.

Our interlocutor points out that she is not sure it would be even better if people from Kosovo had received more space in the campaign because, as she says, no one in Belgrade knows what voters from Kosovo want to hear.

"We don't know much about voters from Kosovo either politically or socially. They are an electoral asset for some party that wants to say, 'We would be tougher than the government'. So, I don't know what they would want to hear, but I can see that the opposition is not very interested, I assume that the government has the Serb List there and surely knows what the mood is like in Kosovo. That's why I can't say that the government is not interested and doesn't know the situation. But maybe they take it for granted. As for other parties, I think they want to tell the Serbs in Kosovo what should be done and what they would do better, rather than hear what they need. Their status is raised only to politically harm someone or to present themselves better here, and I haven't noticed any real concern for those people in the campaign, and I think the Serbs in Kosovo have no reason to expect anything special in these elections", Smajlovic concludes.