Kosovo Assembly Deadline Expires, Kurti Seeks More Time

The continuation of Kosovo’s constitutive Assembly session was scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday, eleven hours after the deadline set by the Constitutional Court in Pristina had expired. Instead of naming a candidate for Assembly speaker, Albin Kurti, leader of the Self Determination Movement and acting prime minister, again asked for more time to consult with party leaders.

The session was suspended before noon. As Kurti stepped down from the podium and headed back to his seat, Alliance for the Future of Kosovo lawmaker Time Kadrijaj threw eggs at him. Self Determination Movement lawmakers stood up to shield him, his bodyguards entered the plenary hall, and speaker Avni Dehari called in security and suspended the session at around 12:44 p.m., announcing that lawmakers would be told later when it would resume.

We already reported on this session’s first suspension, on Thursday. Kurti asked for the same thing then as on Saturday, more time for talks, and that session also stopped after lawmakers’ mandates were confirmed. The difference now is that the deadline has since expired.

What Actually Expired at Midnight

The Constitutional Court of Kosovo had ruled that the Assembly’s constitution had to be completed within 30 days of the certification of the election results. That deadline expired at midnight between Friday and Saturday, and the Assembly still had no elected speaker or deputy speakers, meaning it had not been constituted. The session nonetheless continued after the deadline had passed.

From the podium, Kurti explained why he was asking for a delay.

“We still do not have a political agreement, so to avoid new elections, I am asking for more time.”

He refused, however, to alter the arithmetic produced by the election. “The result is the will of the people and we cannot make a deal that would change the result,” Kurti said, adding that there is a wide gap between the demands of the Democratic League of Kosovo and what voters delivered on June 7.

Why Is There No Deal Yet?

The numbers explain the deadlock. The Self Determination Movement holds 53 seats, the Democratic Party of Kosovo 22, the Democratic League of Kosovo 18, and the Alliance seven. Of the ten seats guaranteed to the Serb community, nine went to the Serbian List, and one to the For Freedom, Justice and Survival party.

Forming a government takes 61 votes, and Kurti can reach that with lawmakers from non Serb minority communities. Electing the president takes 80 votes in the first two rounds, a threshold a government without the opposition cannot reach. Hence the offer Kurti made Friday to the Democratic Party of Kosovo, led by Bedri Hamza: the Assembly speaker’s post in exchange for taking part in the presidential vote. The Democratic Party of Kosovo repeated that it is staying in opposition.

The Democratic League of Kosovo wants more. Its leader, Ljumir Abdixhiku, whom Kurti met on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, said a deal remains far off and that without institutional balance there can be no political agreement. His condition is the presidency.

Opposition parties, the Democratic Party of Kosovo, the Democratic League of Kosovo, the Alliance and the Serbian List, gathered at the Assembly building Friday evening to demand the session resume before the deadline expired. They found the plenary hall’s doors locked, something that had not happened since the legislature was established after 1999. Hamza called it “an unconstitutional takeover of the institutions.”

What Happens If There Is No Deal?

The clock is already running in the red. The government must be elected within 15 days of the acting president naming the prime ministerial candidate proposed by the Assembly majority, and the president within 60 days of the Assembly’s constitution. Neither deadline has started running, because the first step has not been taken.

This is not the first time Pristina has hit the same wall. The snap election on June 7 was called precisely because the president was not elected within the deadline set by the Constitutional Court, and now the same court has set a new deadline that has expired without a result. Kurti himself has named the outcome he is trying to avoid, new elections, and that is the only consequence both sides in the chamber publicly acknowledge.

For the Serb community, the deadlock means that the Serbian List’s nine lawmakers, along with the one seat held by the For Freedom, Justice and Survival party, sit in a body that formally does not yet exist, so there is no debate on issues affecting northern Kosovo. No date has been set for the session to resume.