Kosovo Ruling Party Braces for Test in Mayoral Runoffs

Political parties were on the final day of a shortened election campaign this Friday as Kosovo voters in more than half the country's municipalities prepared to vote on Sunday in the second round of mayoral elections.

Twenty-one of 38 municipalities in Kosovo which did not give the majority to any of candidates in the first round in October 17 will elect mayors this Sunday in what is considered a key test for Kosovo's governing Vetevendosje party.

The party came to the local elections with great expectations after its landslide win in the legislative elections earlier this year, becoming the first party since Kosovo broke away from Serbia in 1999 to win more than half of all the votes cast.

Only 10 months later it experienced a blow, becoming the only mainstream party in the country to not win a single municipality in the first round.

All Vetevendosje could do is secure a second round test in 12 municipalities. including four so-called big municipalities - Prishtine/Pristina, Prizren, Gjilan/Gnjilane and Gjakove/Dakovica. It is also in the race for Podujeve/Podujevo, a municipality it won from the LDK last year in extraordinary elections.

All three other parties, Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, Democratic League of Koasovo, LDK and Aliance for the Future of Kosovo AAK - which together did not muster the number of votes Vetevendosje won in February - had something to celebrate in the evening of October 17.

Kosovo Prime Minister and Vetevendosje head Albin Kurti has insisted that parliamentary and local elections are different, while maintaining that his party has been grown in vote compared to the last municipal elections of 2017.

However, he admits his party's frailties.

"The activism and mobilization of our...