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Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s party will be forced to hunt for coalition partners after it failed to win a majority of seats in parliamentary elections, as the small Balkans country strives to repair frayed ties with the west.
Kurti, a hardline leftwing nationalist who has ruffled feathers among rival politicians, Balkan leaders and Kosovo’s allies since coming to power in 2021, won just over 41 per cent of votes in Sunday’s poll. The three main opposition parties, which have a stronger pro-western stance than Kurti’s Self-Determination Movement, received a combined 47 per cent.
About 93 per cent of votes have been counted, according to the Central Election Commission on Monday. The stalemate means either group will need the other — or a patchwork of small forces and ethnic representatives — to form a cabinet.
The prospect of a more pro-western administration will be welcomed by allies who view the country’s growing nationalism under Kurti as a threat to stability in the western Balkans region.
But Kurti struck a defiant and celebratory tone late on Sunday night.
“You saw the lies [the opposition parties] told. They said the state budget will be larger than GDP. What hayvan!,” he said on a stage in Pristina, using the Albanian word for animals as a derogatory term. “They promised a [wage increase] higher than their means . . . But the time for hayvan has passed.”
Bedri Hamza, the centre-right’s main candidate, said his second-placed Democratic party will first hold coalition talks with other opposition forces.
“We will not be involved in any coalition with [Kurti’s] Self-Determination Movement,” Hamza told reporters on Monday. “We have a lot of differences, they want an absolute power.”
After a brief but bloody war with Serbia, Kosovo seceded from its northern neighbour in 2008. Most western countries have recognised its sovereignty. Kurti banned Belgrade, which has not recognised Kosovo’s independence, from offering financial and administrative support for the country’s ethnic Serbs.
Serbs, some 5 per cent of Kosovo’s population, have in recent years walked out of public institutions and staged protests in response to Pristina’s moves to weaken the community’s ties with Serbia.
After an escalation of tensions that had started with a ban on Serbia-issued licence plates and identity cards and culminated in a deadly stand-off between Serb paramilitaries and Kosovo police in September 2023, a dialogue brokered by the EU and US failed to deliver a tangible improvement in relations between Pristina and Belgrade.
Richard Grenell, US President Donald Trump’s envoy for special missions, said Kurti was a hindrance to bilateral ties.
“We need trustworthy partners. The Kurti government was not trustworthy during Trump’s first term, nor during [former president Joe Biden’s] term,” Grenell wrote on X a week ago.
“Republicans and Democrats have criticised Kurti consistently for taking unilateral actions that destabilise the region. So have the EU and Nato,” he added. “The international community is united against Kurti . . . Relations have never been lower.”
Grenell then denounced as “delusional” Kurti’s response that Kosovo-US ties were unharmed.
Edward P Joseph, a Balkan expert at Johns Hopkins University, said parties in Pristina must factor in the need to repair western alliances as they haggle for power.
“If they want good relations with the US, they will have to bear in mind what Kosovo’s strategic interests dictate,” Joseph said. “This is a small country with a much larger hostile neighbour in Serbia, which has backing from Russia, China and even Iran . . . You need the US with you. It’s a strategic reality.”
Kurti’s need for a coalition partner meant the west could leverage the situation to help restart Pristina’s talks with Belgrade — especially as political instability has also weakened Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić.
“There is an opportunity to reset the dialogue if there is a change in government,” Joseph said from Belgrade. “Vučić is facing a decision whether to have new elections . . . The dynamics are strikingly different from before.”
Agon Maliqi, a Pristina-based independent analyst, warned of the tough challenges ahead.
“The only scenario in which I see a more dialogue-powered government is a bigger coalition between Kurti and one of the main opposition parties,” he said. “Only that would be a government able to engage on the dialogue legitimately.”
“The opposition and Kurti have very different visions,” he added. “All opposition parties would prefer to co-ordinate with the west . . . But based on last night’s rhetoric Kurti seems to be in polarisation, not consensus, mode.”
