Kosovo’s Central Electoral Commission says a total of eight Serbian political organisations have decided to participate in the November local elections and submitted lists of candidates.
Vladeta Kostic, a Kosovo Serb representative, on Wednesday submitted the united list of Belgrade-backed candidates for councillors and mayors that will run in Kosovo local elections late on Wednesday.

The list, entitled simply “Serbia”, has applied for the elections as a civic initiative and comprises members of several Belgrade-based parties, including Serbia’s ruling Socialist Party and Progressive Party.

In the local elections on November 3, the list will run for mayoral seats in ten municipalities, six in the south and four in north Kosovo.

The candidates for the post of mayor in the biggest mainly Serbian municipality, North Mitrovca, are Krstimir Pantic, the current mayor, and Oliver Ivanovic, former state secretary in Serbia’s Ministry for Kosovo.

While Pantic is the candidate of the civic initiative “Serbia”, Ivanovic will run as the leader of another civic initiative “Serbia, Democracy, Justice”.

Earlier on Wednesday, Ivica Dacic, Serbian Prime Minister and the leader of the Socialists, said most Belgrade-based parties had decided to participate in the elections together. “We agreed on one list,” Dacic told reporters.

“We will send a clear message to Kosovo and Metohija Serbs to go to the polls. Serbs will thus have the legitimacy to represent the people,” he added.

By late Wednesday, 23 parties, two party coalitions, 11 independent candidates and 46 civic initiatives had applied to participate in the elections.

The eight Serb-run political organisations that applied are the Independent Liberal Party and the Serbian Social Democratic Party and the civic initiatives Serbia, the Alliance of Kosovo Serbs, the Common Future Democratic Initiative, the United Serbian List – Vidovdan and Serbia, Democracy, Justice.

The deadline for organisations to submit their lists expired at midnight.

At the same time, Serbs in northern Kosovo opposed to taking part in the elections have launched a campaign urging people to boycott them.

Billboards posted in north Mitrovica claimed that Pristina-run elections violated the Serbian constitution.

In a concession to Serbian concerns, on September 2, Kosovo’s Central Electoral Committee decided to change the ballots and print them without symbols of the Republic of Kosovo.

Serbia had demanded “status neutral” ballor papers in order to encourage Kosovo Serbs to go out to the polls.

Most Serbs in Kosovo do not recognise Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, declared in 2008, and resented the idea of symbols of the Kosovo state being included on ballot papers. balkaninsight