Kosovo Police Take Down Student List Banners
Police removed banners in Zubin Potok and Lapje Selo and confirmed that campaigning for Serbia's elections is banned in Kosovo.
Kosovo police ordered the removal of a “Students Win” banner from a gas station on the main road in Zubin Potok on October 18. They told Nova that campaigning for Serbia’s elections, scheduled for October 25, is banned in Kosovo and that the removal follows from that ban.
Zubin Potok is not the first case. According to Nova, police have now blocked the hanging of Student List banners in three cases, and on one occasion they also halted a Serb List rally, citing its link to the election campaign.
What did police remove, and where?
Footage of the banner coming down in Zubin Potok was posted on Instagram by Milija Bisevac, president of the Serbian National Movement. He wrote:
“Who this sign bothers is clear to everyone. Vucic, Kurti and the Kosovo police, but also the Serb List, which probably had a hand in this.”
In Lapje Selo, in central Kosovo, police took down two banners over the past few days. Nova reports that at least one of them was put up by the party For Freedom, Justice and Survival, whose president Nenad Rasic is a minister in the Kosovo government. According to Radio KiM, representatives of Rasic’s party tried to hang the banners, and police from Gracanica took them down after hours of haggling and waiting for a signal from Pristina.
Sources differ on the rally in North Mitrovica. Police entered a school where the Serb List had organized an event about the elections in Serbia, but Nova says it was the Traffic School, while Radio KiM says it was the Technical School. Kosovo police, according to Radio KiM, confirmed on that occasion that campaigning for Serbian elections in Kosovo is not possible.
Who backs whom in Kosovo?
The divide among Kosovo Serbs runs through two parties. The Serb List, led by Zlatan Elek, backs Aleksandar Vucic and the SNS. Elek, as an SNS member, took part in a televised debate in Serbia on health care, and deputy presidents Igor Simic and Dalibor Jevtic appeared on shows about the electoral process.
Rasic backs the Student List. His son Nikola, a councillor in Gracanica, wore a “Students Win” shirt at the last municipal assembly session, and MP Lazar Radulovic walked through the Assembly hall in Pristina in the same shirt last Thursday.
That support, according to people Radio KiM spoke to, does not help the Student List. Miodrag Marinkovic, director of the NGO CASA, assessed that it is a personal score to settle with the Serb List:
“Of course, from Rasic’s perspective, given the pressure he is under from Serbia, a change of government and regime in Serbia would suit him. Hoping he will get some validation out of it. But I think that is a false hope.”
Dusan Radakovic of the Center for Advocacy of Democratic Culture (ACDC) says he is surprised that the Student List has not spoken out, even when police were removing the banners. Political scientist Aleksandar Sljuka believes Rasic’s support compromises the student movement, because some Serb List officials and officials of the ruling party in Serbia are trying to use that support to discredit the list.
What about the ethnic Albanian parties from Serbia?
Interference in the electoral process, say Radio KiM’s interviewees, does not run in only one direction. On September 29, Albin Kurti met representatives of eight Albanian parties from Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja in the prime minister’s office. They agreed on a coalition called “United Valley,” led by former MP Saip Kamberi, which will run on a joint list on October 25.
Arberije Nagavci, head of the Self-Determination parliamentary group, asked the Kosovo Assembly for reciprocal measures: that Albanians get ten guaranteed seats in the Serbian Assembly, just as Serbs have in the Kosovo one. Radakovic assessed that demand this way:
“Well, that is unthinkable, the two things have nothing in common.”
He also said he sees a wider goal in Kurti’s moves: “He has this aspiration to unite Albanians, to make that great Albania, to take part in elections in Albania.”
How many votes are behind the dispute?
The voter roll lists 115,856 voters from Kosovo, 21,695 more than at the parliamentary elections in late 2023, when there were 94,161. There will be no voting in Kosovo, because the Kosovo government banned it. Voters from Kosovo will cast ballots at 60 polling stations in Raska, Tutin, Kursumlija and Vranje.
Political scientist Sljuka told Radio KiM that around 20,000 people from Kosovo voted in the last elections and that this cannot decide the outcome:
“You have a total of 20,000 people who voted last time, and 20,000 is literally a couple of buildings in Belgrade. So in the end it cannot change the election result, or have a decisive influence on it.”
The Student List, according to Radakovic, has not so far commented on Rasic’s support, and the elections are six days away.
