Parties have started campaigning for Sunday’s run-off polls, which will be held in 25 municipalities, and will test the public mood ahead of next year’s general election.
Edona Peci BIRN Pristina
The campaign for Sunday’s run-off elections in 25 of Kosovo’s 38 municipalities started on Monday and will end on Friday at midnight.

Candidates of the ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, will run again for the post of mayor in 11 of the municipalities.

Those of the coalition between the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, AAK, and the Dardania Democratic League, LDD, are competing in eight.

Behlul Beqaj, professor of politics, said if the AAK failed to do well in the western town of Djakovica, it might herald the party’s unstoppable decline.

“If the AKR fails here, its end will start,” he said. “It will also be a knockout blow for the PDK if it loses in Prizren,” he added, noting that the results will test the mood of the voters ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections.

Seven candidates of the Serbian Citizen’s Initiative, known as Srpska, are running in mainly Serbian-populated municipalities.

Dusan Janic, a political analyst, said the Serbian government-backed Srpska list was unlikely to win in more than five.

“The victory of the Srpska list is very important for the government in Belgrade, because it consists of people paid out of the Serbian budget,” he noted.

“The Serbian government has promised to resolve the problem of Kosovo… they want to prove they achieved something”, he added.

Janjic said Belgrade should not ignore other Serbian parties in Kosovo by backing only the Srpska list, because “it could cause a conflict between the Serbs that are active in Kosovo politics”.

As in the first round of the Kosovo local elections, held at earlier this month, the run-off will be monitored by thousands of local and international observers.

The US ambassador to Kosovo, Tracey Jacobson, said she expected the improvements seen in the first round of elections, compared to past polls, to be sustained this time, too.

“A flawed or fraudulent process on December 1 would render the progress made in November’s first round elections meaningless,” she said on Monday.

The outcome of the local elections is considered a key element for the EU-brokered deal on normalizing relations between Kosovo and Serbia.

It is especially important in the Serb-dominated municipalities, as an autonomous Association of Serbian Municipalities is due to be established once the elections are over./balkaninsight/