Vetevendosje Drives Hard Bargain in Kosovo

The opposition Vetevendosje Movement in Kosovo has just 16 seats in the 120-seat parliament, but still appears to hold the key to the Prime Minister’s office.

That key comes with a price. As the newly elected members of parliament assembled on Thursday, Vetevendosje made clear that it would not back the opposition bloc led by Ramush Haradinaj of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, AAK, unless it agreed to important conditions.

“The Vetevendosje Movement is making life harder for the opposition bloc by showing them it has the power in all this political mess,” political analyst Halil Matoshi said.
Without Vetevendosje’s 16 votes, the coalition of AAK, Nisma and the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, may not be able to stop Hashim Thaci from securing a third mandate.

With just 47 seats, well short of the 61 needed to elect a new government, it would otherwise need to get extra votes from ethnic minority MPs, or from defectors from Thaci’s Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK.

The main sticking point is Vetevendosje’s demand that it lead any future EU-mediated talks with Serbia. That amounts to a softening of Vetevendosje’s original demand, which was to stop the talks altogether.

Vetevendosje, led by Albin Kurti, has taken a hard-line stance against the dialogue with Belgrade, insisting that it has aided the EU aspirations of Kosovo’s former enemy while offering Kosovo little in return.

The opposition bloc has already agreed to one of Vetevendosje’s other key demands, which is to halt the privatization of state-owned companies, while  agreement on the other conditions seems to be in sight.

However, it remains unclear what the final agreement will contain and whetherit involves Vetevendosje abandoning...