Stevic: Osmani expects Kurti to nominate her for a second term, he is calculating

Journalist from North Mitrovica Lazar Stevic says for Kosovo Online that Vjosa Osmani has reason to believe that Self-Determination will once again nominate her for president of Kosovo because she closely cooperated with Albin Kurti, but he does not believe that such a proposal would secure the required two-thirds majority in parliament.

Kurti, together with minority and non-Serb parties, Stevic notes, cannot vote through a second term for Osmani, but would need the support of a stronger party, such as the Democratic League of Kosovo, or others in order to elect her president.

“Vjosa Osmani has announced that she will submit her candidacy and now expects Albin Kurti to fulfill his part of the agreement and nominate her for a second presidential term. However, we can already see that Kurti is calculating, primarily because he knows that the opposition will certainly not support Vjosa Osmani for a second term. During the campaign, she supported Self-Determination and Albin Kurti, and that is something the opposition will not easily forgive, so it is still debatable whom Self-Determination will nominate for president of Kosovo,” Stevic says.

As he adds, more serious and broader calculations are now at play, because Albin Kurti wants a stable government. He is aware of the level of support he received from citizens in the last parliamentary elections and would not want to squander it easily by making a mistake with the proposal for a new president.

“If she is not elected in the first or second round, it is most likely that new elections will be called. How much that would benefit Albin Kurti remains to be seen, because he invested all his efforts to have the parliamentary elections held on December 28, when people from the diaspora came to Kosovo in large numbers. He used that opportunity and won 57 seats, and if new elections were held in April or May, I do not believe he would be able to repeat such a result. Therefore, he has to think carefully about what to do next, whether to support Vjosa Osmani or perhaps nominate someone else,” our interlocutor assesses.

If Osmani were to receive a second term, Stevic says that her relationship with Serbs in Kosovo would remain at the status quo, which means an absence of contact. As he notes, she did not have any relationship with Serbs even during her first term, while her numerous interviews showed that she used every opportunity to accuse Serbia “of everything imaginable,” starting with many events that took place in the north.

“She called on the international community to punish Serbia, to impose sanctions on Serbia, Serbia was to blame for everything, and as for local Serbs in Kosovo, she had almost no contact with them. She did not speak with Serbs to see how they live, but instead used every opportunity to accuse Serbs of everything. So if there is a second term, she will still have no cooperation with Serbs, because that is how she has positioned herself. And Serbs do not want any contact with her either, because she has done nothing good and has not taken any step or extended a hand of reconciliation. Therefore, the status quo will remain, or a frozen conflict, as I would call the relationship between the president of Kosovo and the Serbs living in Kosovo,” Stevic concludes.