Kosovo votes with war crimes court, corruption in mind

PRISTINA: Kosovo began voting yesterday for a new parliament that will have to navigate tense relations with Serbia, endemic corruption and possible war crimes indictments for some of its leaders.

The early general election is only the third since Kosovo unilaterally declared independence in 2008. But it “might be the hardest to predict,” according to Florian Bieber, professor of Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz in Austria.

A month after the last government lost a confidence vote, the battle for a new prime minister pitches an ex- guerrilla commander against a former student protest leader and an economist likened to French President Emmanuel Macron.

Polls opened at 0500 GMT across the country of about 1.8 million people, most of whom are ethnic Albanian.

Dozens of pensioners were queueing outside polling booths in the capital Pristina, despite rainy weather.

“This election has to open a new chapter,” said 66-year- old Ekrem Haziri.

“It is time to end the huge abuse of tax-payers’ money. We need a government that will take care of its own people.”

Overshadowing the vote is a new special court set up to try war crimes allegedly committed by members of the pro-independence Kosovo Liberation Army ( KLA), which fought Serbian forces in the late 1990s.

Among those some speculate could be on the list of indictees — which may be announced later this year — are President Hashim Thaci and outgoing speaker Kadri Veseli, who both hail from the powerful Democratic Party of Kosovo ( PDK).

The European Centre for Minority Issues, a Germanybased research institute, said the court’s arrest warrants “compounded with the political agenda, may severely hamper or even bring about the fall of the future government”. — AFP