Twenty-seven political subjects and 1232 candidates have started, well ahead of time, the race to secure one of the 9 seats in the Assembly in the parliamentary elections of February 2025, 120.
The electoral campaign officially begins on January 11, but officials and candidates of political parties focused on the vote only a few hours after Friday, August 16, the president, Vjosa Osmani, announced the date for holding the elections. In the following months, they organized rallies with citizens, both inside and outside the country, and poured thousands of euros into posting promotional videos on social networks.
The February elections are the first regular ones since the declaration of independence and will be held based on the new Election Law, which brings changes to the process. Adopted in the summer of 2023, the Law foresees changes in the way of voting, counting of votes, diaspora voting and campaign management. And, the increase in the number of candidates, for whom the citizens can vote, is also foreseen.
Challenges and Facilitations of Change
One of the main changes foreseen by the Law on Elections is that each voter will be able to choose up to 10 candidates for deputies, unlike the five that were in the last parliamentary elections.
The inclusion of this change in the Law has been accompanied by discussions and objections.
Eugen Cakolli, from the network of non-governmental organizations “Democracy in Action”, warns of a danger that can be produced by this way of voting.
“Over 60 percent of citizens have not, let’s say, defined who the fifth candidate will be… There may even be cases of potential manipulations by the commissioners, where in cases where the voters do not mark all the columns up to ten candidates, there is a risk that these will be filled by irresponsible commissioners with their favorite candidates”, he declared.
The member of the CEC, Arianit Elshani, considers it a challenge to convey the right message to voters about this way of voting.
“Here we need the support of other actors, even the media, even political parties, to educate the citizens in relation to voting with 10 candidates. So, their right today is to vote for one to ten candidates for a political party. As long as a person uses his right to vote, it is good to use it to the full, even choosing his best candidates, but of course it is always in his will”, says Elshani.
But the chairman of the Commission for Legislation, Adnan Rrustemi, thinks that the increase in the number of candidates who can be voted for will contribute to the quality of political representation.
“It has been estimated that this serves, let’s say, the opportunity for certain political and professional figures of certain profiles and different social categories to increase their opportunities to get votes all over Kosovo little by little, but eventually also to be elected deputy”, he declared.
Citizens in the diaspora will also have the right to elect candidates for parliament. Until December 24, the CEC accepted about 70 requests from the diaspora for voter registration. But unlike the voters in Kosovo, they will appear in front of the ballot boxes on February 8. They will do this with physical presence or with the vote sent by mail through diplomatic missions in 22 countries of the world, unlike earlier when they had to travel to Kosovo or send the vote by mail.
“We have considered that it is very important to eliminate these obstacles for emigrants to participate in the elections that in the past, against their will, have had many difficulties to register and vote. That is, we have supplemented the voting method with two new options: physical voting at embassies and consulates on Saturday, one day before the election day in Kosovo, and voting by mail, by sending them by mail to the address of the embassies and consulates”, said Rrustemi.
But this vote outside the borders of Kosovo has been qualified as a challenge for the smooth running of the process.
“It’s a challenge in relation to how every process has to go there, be it the nomination of the commissioners, be it the material that will be stored, the material that will be sent. There is also this other postal service that must be contracted by the CEC and that we are in the process of tendering. So, there are challenges that we had to get experiences from other countries, but also to see the best practices that we can implement as an institution”, thinks Elshani, a member of the CEC from the PDK.
Two counting processes
While the emigrants’ vote will be counted after their arrival in Kosovo, the same will be done with that of resident citizens. For them, the counting will be divided into two processes. On the day of the elections, the vote for the political subject will be calculated first in the polling stations, and one day later, in the municipal counting centers, the vote for the deputy. The media will also have access to the vote counting process.
This change, according to Rustem, will affect faster certification of results.
“In Kosovo, it took almost two months for the counting and final certification of the result, while the elections, which have generally been extraordinary, were organized within thirty days. And I believe that this counting of candidates in municipal centers will speed up the final certification of votes, because there will be no need for numerous recounts focused on the QNR”, he says.
Elshani thinks that this way of counting also ensures transparency, since the candidates will be able to learn the result the day after the election.
“They will know exactly, without having to contact the members of the CEC or the secretariat, or within the political parties. They will have this public and open from the CEC portal, where all the results, forms and also the results that are counted in municipal counting centers will be published”, he added.
But for Cakolli of “DnV” the change made is unnecessary.
“We believe that it was a wrong decision to go with this option, because international standards and best practices require that the counting of votes for candidates is not done in spaces different from those for political subjects”, he says.
There are also changes in the conditional voting process, which will only be allowed in one polling station in each of the municipalities. And for assisted voting, a well-founded justification will be required. The general elections will be monitored for the first time by cameras, the footage of which will be made available to the institutions in order to clarify the misuse.
According to the preliminary list, there are a total of 2 million 47 thousand 148 citizens with the right to vote, or 161 thousand 700 more voters compared to the local elections of October 17, 2021. The number of young people who will vote for the first time in the elections for the Assembly is estimated to be around 210 thousand.
Early campaign
For participation in the elections, 27 political subjects and 1232 candidates passed the control filter. But despite passing this institutional filter, the CEC in late December decided not to license the party of Kosovo Serbs, Lista Serbe. The decision was criticized by the United States of America, the European Union, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and the OSCE mission in Kosovo, as it was qualified as politically influenced. After the subject’s complaint to the Electoral Panel for Complaints and Submissions (PZAP), the decision was reversed.
That all participants in these elections will have more than four weeks and a maximum budget of 2 million euros per campaign. But they got to work already in the summer. Gatherings with citizens for the presentation of government programs intensified by the end of the year. While the opposition parties focused their campaigns within Kosovo, the one in power focused on the diaspora. Prime Minister Albin Kurti used his official trips abroad for meetings with compatriots. Only in October he traveled to Germany and in France he met LVV supporters in Munich, Stuttgart, Cologne and Berlin, as well as in Paris. A month later, the gatherings continued in Vienna, Oslo and Frankfurt. And all this, in the Government, they said that they were organized for compatriots from the party centers in exile.
In “DnV” they qualified the use of public resources by the Government for electoral purposes as problematic.
“Current trends show a growing tendency to put state resources into the function of electoral activities and goals. Some of the cases that illustrate such a trend include the recent visits abroad of the prime minister and ministers, which are serving more as a platform for electoral purposes under the guise of diplomatic engagement and discussions with the diaspora… Holding political rallies abroad, in the name of official duty, constitutes a misuse of resources paid for by taxpayers,” states the report “Towards Election Day: Pre-Election Preparations, Dynamics and Pre-Campaign Trends” published in November.
Regarding the arrangement of gatherings with compatriots, the expenses for them and the coordination with the official agenda of Prime Minister Kurti, the LVV did not return an answer since they were asked for the first time in October.
Unlike the ruling party, the opposition entities focused their campaign on social networks. For this, based on a report issued by the “Meta” platform, from September 23 to December 21, thousands of euros were spent. The list of subjects is headed by LDK, with 33.908 euros spent. Apart from its chairman, Lumir Abdixhiku, he poured 11.701 euros. The one from the PDK, Memli Krasniqi, shared 5575 euros for sponsoring the posts, while the party’s candidate for prime minister, Bedri Hamza, 4211 euros. The president of AAK, Ramush Haradinaj, spent 5747 euros on mailings. LVV, as a subject, paid 365 euros for posts, while its chairman and candidate for prime minister, Albin Kurti, does not appear on the list.
According to the analysis of “Democracy in Action”, such a trend reflects the dependence on social networks for the spread of political messages, but estimated that transparency on expenses is necessary to maintain the integrity of the elections.
