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Southeast Europe
May 12, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 14
has released tear gas in the parliament on several occasions and held street protests, some of which were marred by violence.
Ratification requires a two-thirds majority, and even within the PDK and the LDK support for ratification is not unanimous. As of May 3, the 11 ethnic Serbian representatives in the parliament had not clarified whether they would support rati- fication either.
Last September, Mustafa withdrew the ratification of the border agreement from the parliament’s agenda, as he assessed that the conditions for the vote were not favourable. However, in recent weeks there has been mounting international pressure on Kosovo to ratify the agreement. The EU turned down a proposal from Mustafa for con- ditional visa liberalisation in April.
A deep political crisis resulted from the deal with
Montenegro, as well as another agreement with Serbia reached by the current government in Au- gust 2015. The second deal envisages the creation of a community of Serb majority municipalities in Kosovo.
MP Valdete Bajrami, who filed the no-confidence motion, stressed that Kosovo is in a political crisis and that the country needs a new governing ap- proach. In addition to the agreements with Mon- tenegro and Serbia, she also criticised Mustafa’s government for the country’s economic under- development (which she blamed on mismanage- ment), unemployment, deterioration of the educa- tion system and mass emigration from Kosovo.
Mustafa defended his government to the parlia- ment, stressing the strong economic growth rate, a recent deal reached with the International Mon- etary Fund and the progress made towards visa liberalisation with the EU.
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