Kosovo Assembly registers MPs ahead of August 6 session

The Kosovo Assembly will register its new members on August 3, 4 and 5, with the constitutive session of the new legislature set for August 6 at 10 a.m. The sitting lands one day before the constitutional deadline of August 7, exactly two months after the snap election.

The registration schedule, drawn up by the Assembly administration, was confirmed after a meeting held on July 31 by Albulena Haxhiu, who presides over the Assembly, with representatives of the parliamentary groups. Haxhiu said the procedure is familiar to everyone and that the Assembly’s preparations are complete. Vlora Citaku of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) and Besnik Tahiri, head of the parliamentary group of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK), also spoke at the meeting.

Why constituting the Assembly settles nothing on its own

At the snap election on June 7, Vetevendosje won 53 seats, the Democratic Party of Kosovo 22, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) 18, and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo seven. Electing a president requires 80 votes, so the governing party cannot install a head of state even with every one of its own MPs present. It is 27 votes short. The constitutional clock for electing a president only starts running once the Assembly is constituted, which means August 6 does not close the crisis so much as move it into a new phase.

Albin Kurti sent letters on July 9 inviting Bedri Hamza, Lumir Abdixhiku and Ardian Gjini to a meeting, as government spokesman Arlind Manxhuka confirmed. Nearly a month passed between that invitation and the scheduled sitting, and none of the three opposition parties has said it will back a Vetevendosje candidate.

After the meeting with Haxhiu, Citaku said her party would sit in opposition and argued that electing a president is what would let Kurti govern for four years. Tahiri demanded that the Assembly be constituted immediately and called the delay to August 6 incomprehensible, given that the sitting was called only one day before the deadline runs out.

Abazi: a performance, then another election

A sharper reading came from Haki Abazi, a former deputy prime minister of Kosovo, in an interview with Ekonomia Online. He argues that parliament has not functioned for more than three years and that the timing of the sitting is itself a statement about how institutions are being assembled.

“The very fact that the session was called at the tail end of the constitutional deadlines shows how unserious the approach to forming institutions is. Especially when you consider that we have had no functioning parliament for more than three years… (Forming a new legislature) will genuinely carry no value, because I am convinced the entire scenario has been prepared so that we go to a new election, and during the winter at that.”

Abazi then spells out the sequence he expects, step by step.

“That means we will have an Assembly constituted purely for the sake of form, then a failure to elect a president, which will lead into a new crisis that necessarily calls for a new election”

To the argument that the opposition is blocking institutions, the former deputy prime minister has a short answer.

“You cannot have the votes for a government and at the same time shift the blame onto other parties.”

What changed since last week

When we reported that the Kosovo Assembly would be constituted on August 6, one day before the deadline, only the date of the sitting was known. The registration schedule is now known too, and it is the one step in the whole process that can be completed without a single opposition vote. Everything after it needs numbers that do not exist yet: electing a speaker, then electing a head of state.

If August 6 delivers nothing but the verification of mandates while the leadership vote slips, the calendar moves to autumn. The winter election cycle Abazi describes then stops being one man’s forecast and becomes arithmetic visible in the June results.