Kosovo Braces for Voters’ Verdict in Sunday’s Snap Election

More than 1,000 MP candidates will be keeping their fingers crossed on Sunday, awaiting the voters' verdict in Kosovo's sixth parliamentary elections in under 14 years.

Some 28 political entities are on the ballot papers seeking votes in yet another early election. Since 20017, not one cabinet in Kosovo has succeeded in completing its full four-year term.

Last week, the Central Election Commission, CEC, approved the final list of voters, with 1,794,862 names on it - over 143,000 voters less than in the previous 2019 elections.

The CEC said the number of voters had declined because many voters who do not have valid Kosovo documents had been removed from the register. In the past, those who possessed IDs issued by UN Administration Mission, UNMIK, were included on the list.

"Ballots are now ready. On Saturday they will be distributed to Municipal Electoral Commissions and on Sunday morning they will be sent to 888 polling centres all over Kosovo," Valmir Elezi, spokesperson for the CEC, told BIRN on Friday.

Snap elections were triggered in December 2020, when the Constitutional Court ruled that the coalition government led by Avdullah Hoti's Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, was illegitimate because it had been voted into office with the help of an invalid vote cast by an MP with a criminal conviction in the last three years.

Hoti had become prime minister after the government led by Albin Kurti, which had come to power following previous snap elections in October 2019, was ousted after only 51 days in the office.

The elections are being held for a new parliament that will then elect a new government. However the race for the post of Prime Minister has also been in the spotlight in the ten-day campaign.

Kurti,...