Concerns that interest in attending Assembly sessions is declining

If the situation of the blockade of the Kosovo Assembly is prolonged and the ninth legislature is not constituted, concerns have been expressed that credibility in all institutions will be lost and interest in attending the legislative sessions that are being scheduled every 48 hours will decrease.

This is how lawyer Tomë Gashi and Adelina Hasani from the Kosovo Center for Security Studies see the situation created in the Kosovo Assembly, after the fourth failure to elect the Speaker of the Assembly on 25.04.2025 and the sixth attempt to constitute the Assembly.

"In the future, maybe it's a political tactic of some political party to prolong this situation and then everyone or the majority can agree to go to extraordinary elections and I believe that maybe, I'm not an MP, maybe the idea is to prolong this issue, because it is known that next year the president or president must be elected and the political parties have this job, with calculations," said lawyer Gashi on the show "Kallxo Përnime".

Lawyer Gashi finds the abstaining MPs in the Kosovo Parliament "a bit insidious" and, according to him, MPs should either say yes or no, and not be afraid of anyone.

"But when you abstain, you say, you know what, I'm quiet, like a sin, I'm neither for yes nor for no, what you're doing is leaving the ball to you. And abstention seems to me not to be, in my opinion, not something that contributes to solutions as a legal solution, even though here it has to do with issues of political resentment," said Gashi.

Regarding the statements about holding early elections, according to Gashi, it is most convenient for the Vetëvendosje Movement to go to these elections.

Read too Albulena Haxhiu fails again to become parliament speaker, constitutive session interrupted

Adelina Hasani from the Kosovo Center for Security Studies (KCSS) considers the decrease in interest in following the sessions of the Kosovo Assembly extremely worrying.

"The Government needs to be formed as soon as possible and deal with these geopolitical changes that are taking place. Not in the sense that there is a government in office, we are actually endangered by many factors in Kosovo," said Hasani.

Regarding the proposed candidate of the Vetëvendosje Movement for Speaker of the Parliament, Albulena Haxhiu, Hasani said that the language being used towards Haxhiu is very important, because he considers that this is a targeting of a woman and that the language used is gender-based.

"It is demotivating for all women who want to be part of public life, women are constantly being asked to participate in public discussions in politics and a language of hate is used that pushes them not to participate there," Hasani emphasized.

Kreshnik Gashi said that in an analysis recently published by KALLXO, it emerged that LVV is the largest distributor of hate speech in relation to other political parties, as he said that there are 19 decisions of the Electoral Complaints and Appeals Panel (ECAP) where it is found that they have distributed hate speech against political exponents.

"Among them is Ms. Haxhiu as a person who has been found to have spread hate speech and has not withdrawn from this hate speech, despite the fact that the ECAP has found it as such and despite the fact that the Supreme Court has also found it to be hate speech according to their standards," said Gashi.

Gashi said that an apology should be sought for this hate speech used during the campaign for the parliamentary elections on 09.02.2025.

On the other hand, Rashit Qalaj, a member of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), responded to Hasan regarding Albulena Haxhiu and the language she used, according to him, in the sessions of the Kosovo Assembly.

"It is she [Albulena Haxhiu] who called people criminals in the Assembly session, starting with the Speaker of the Parliament and all the colleagues she had in the Assembly of Kosovo. Even when she was Minister [of Justice], she insulted opposition MPs at every session, with special emphasis on PDK MPs, even though they served at the same time in previous legislatures," said Qalaj.

Hasani said that for insults to women in politics, members of Parliament are responsible not for the reasons they deserve, but for having mechanisms to prevent this language from becoming normalized in Parliament.

On Friday, 25.04.2025, the sixth constitutive session was held, and the proposed candidate of the Vetëvendosje Movement (LVV), Albulena Haxhiu, again failed to receive enough votes for Speaker of Parliament.

For the four times it has been put to the vote, the former opposition parties have been insisting that Haxhiu be replaced, arguing that they will not vote for her. However, Vetëvendosje insists that they will not give up this name.

In four votes on different days, Albulena Haxhiu failed to receive 61 votes "in favor", but only 57, thus continuing a delay in the election of the President, without whom the path to the election of the Vice-Presidents is not even opened and it is not considered that the Assembly has been constituted.

The contradictions continue, the country is stuck in a dead end, no opportunity to resolve the issue is approaching, the parties are not giving up their positions, causing a fog in what is expected to happen in every 48 hours.

The deputies will meet again on 27.04.2025 at 10:00, after the call of the chairman of the session, Avni Dehari.

Only one thing is uniting the two parties - that if there is no solution, there will be an election. If the situation continues to be like this, both PDK and LVV are continuously mentioning this option.

Even though they are meeting every 48 hours, the MPs are continuing with the same positions, successive declarations, but without any solution for the country to get out of this blockade.

Upon the call of the chairman of the constitutive session, Avni Dehari, the deputies are obliged to gather for the continuation of the session no later than 48 hours from its interruption and to proceed further. The Constitution does not specify any deadline for how many days or months after the certification of the election results or after the swearing-in of the deputies, the Assembly must be constituted. However, the new Rules of Procedure of the Assembly define that “interruptions during the constitutive session cannot be longer than 48 hours”.

But, without the constitution of the Assembly, there is no way to begin counting the days for the election of the new Government.

Only after the Speaker and Deputy Speakers of the Assembly have been elected, the President mandates the candidate for Prime Minister in consultation with the party that has the largest number of deputies, which in the current case is the Vetëvendosje Movement.

The mandate holder, no later than 15 days after the appointment, is obliged to present the composition of the Government and seek approval from the Assembly. The Government is considered elected if it receives the majority of votes of all deputies, or at least 61 votes.

If the Government is not approved the first time, the President within 10 days appoints another candidate according to the same procedure. And, if the Government is not elected the second time either, then the President announces early elections, which must be held no later than 40 days from the day of their announcement. The Constitution stipulates that the Assembly is dissolved if within 60 days from the day of the appointment of the mandate by the President of the Republic of Kosovo, the Government cannot be formed.

Based on the results of the February 9, 2025 Elections, the Vetëvendosje Movement received 42.30% of the votes - securing 48 seats in the Assembly, the Democratic Party of Kosovo received 20.95% of the votes or 24 deputies, the Democratic League of Kosovo with 18.27% or 20 deputies and the AAK-NISMA coalition 7.06% or 8 deputies. The Serbian List will have 9 deputies. 1 seat from the Serbian community was won by Nenad Rašić's party. The other 10 deputies will be from other non-majority communities. /Kallxo.com/