Six DSK MPs Reject Sejdiu, Kosovo Heads to Election

Lumir Abdixhiku, leader of the Democratic League of Kosovo (DSK), said on the evening of September 1, after a meeting of his party’s parliamentary group, that six DSK MPs will not vote for Bekim Sejdiu, the candidate for President of Kosovo whom he and Self-Determination leader Albin Kurti had presented a day earlier as their joint choice. The six are Avdullah Hoti, Hikmete Bajrami, Arben Gashi, Armend Zemaj, Kujtim Shala and Janina Imeri.

The decision came just hours after the DSK Presidency unanimously, without a single vote against, backed Sejdiu’s candidacy and called on the parliamentary group to vote in his favor. Sejdiu is a law professor and a former judge of Kosovo’s Constitutional Court.

The agreement between Kurti and Abdixhiku, the product of nearly two months of talks that began on July 9, was presented the day before as a key step out of the institutional deadlock that has lasted since the election held on June 7. By the very next morning, the deal was already in question within DSK’s own parliamentary group.

Why do six votes change the math?

Self-Determination holds 53 seats in the Assembly of Kosovo, DSK holds 18, for a combined 71. Electing a president takes 80 votes in the first two rounds of voting; if neither round produces a winner, 61 votes are enough in the third round. Even before today’s split, that is, with all 18 DSK votes counted, the two parties alone did not have the numbers for the first two rounds, so support from other parties’ MPs was already necessary. With six MPs now saying they will not back Sejdiu, Abdixhiku can count on just twelve votes from his own parliamentary group.

At a press conference after the group meeting, Abdixhiku said:

“This was not a battle with me, the battle with me ended at the DSK Assembly. It was a battle for the Republic of Kosovo.”

He added that, in his view, the six MPs are doing irreversible damage to the process of electing a president:

“Six DSK MPs said they will not respect the Presidency’s decision.”

In Abdixhiku’s assessment, this squanders an exceptional opportunity for Kosovo and pushes the country toward a snap election:

“We are sending the country to a snap election.”

The DSK leader said an MP who presents himself as a party representative but does not respect the leadership’s decision should, at the very least, give up his mandate, though he stressed he had not personally asked anyone to do so. He also announced the party would take measures against the MPs who defied the Presidency’s decision, and said that once the session to elect a president is called, he will show up in the Assembly hall even if he is left without the backing of part of his own parliamentary group.

Hoti and Sejdiu’s old dispute

Of the six MPs named, Avdullah Hoti had already spoken out publicly against the Kurti-Abdixhiku agreement. Hoti and Sejdiu have already been on opposite sides of a constitutional dispute once before. While serving as a Constitutional Court judge, Sejdiu was the rapporteur in a 2020 case that challenged the election of Hoti’s government, after a convicted MP, Etem Arifi, had voted for it and his conviction had since become final. The court struck down that government’s election at the time, opening the way to a snap election. A few months earlier, according to media reporting from that period, Sejdiu had also been one of two judges who voted against confirming then President Hashim Thaci’s decree handing Hoti the mandate to form a government.

Self-Determination’s response

Ahead of his own parliamentary group’s meeting, Albin Kurti said he hoped things would go well and that the party was working on the issue, but declined to comment on Hoti’s position. Arberije Nagavci, head of Self-Determination’s parliamentary group, said the six DSK MPs’ refusal was not the right call:

“Saying ‘no’ to a joint proposal whose goal is to unblock the institutions is not the right decision, and it is not in the citizens’ interest. You know the positions of the PDK and the Alliance. Still, I expect every MP to live up to the responsibility they hold.”

Self-Determination’s parliamentary group met that evening, after Abdixhiku’s press conference, and Kurti said he would address the public in more detail once that meeting was over. No date has yet been set for when the Assembly of Kosovo might convene to elect a president, and the agreement presented as a way out of the deadlock a day earlier now hinges on whether DSK can bring its own parliamentary group back together.