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Vetevendosje is polling at 40-50%, which will almost certainly give party leader Albin Kurti a chance to form his second government.
Kosovo’s new generation of politics
tackle poverty, it opposes privatisation and it wants to support domestic production including through subsidies for local companies. It is also adamantly against compromise with Serbia.
“LVV [Vetevendosje] has taken
a stronger stance on Kosovo’s status than the other parties, which have all conceded the need to compromise with Serbia in order to gain recognition ...
A second factor is the decline of some
of the established parties after their leaders were extradited to The Hague
to stand trial for war crimes at the end of last year. This is particularly so for PDK and the Social Democratic Initiative (Nisma), which are largely vehicles for former president Hashim Thaci and Fatmir Limaj respectively,” Michael Taylor, senior analyst, Eastern Europe at Oxford Analytica, told bne IntelliNews.
“LVV’s strong stand against corruption and its programme stressing poverty eradication, raising the minimum
wage, social housing, economic revival and jobs in a country where many, especially the young, are unemployed
is going down well with voters. As a party which has spent most of its time
in opposition, it is relatively untarnished by corruption.”
A strong poll lead
This has helped the party to a substantial poll lead ahead of Sunday’s election, though its share of the vote in recent polls (which can in any case be unreliable) varies. A poll commissioned by TV station T7 and Gazeta Express put Vetevendosje on 50%, followed by the PDK on 16.94% and the LDK on 15.97%. The latest poll from the Public Opinion Research (PIPOS) put Vetevendosje at just under 41%, the PDK at 22.3% and the LDK at 19.3%.
Vetevendosje was the winner in the
last general election in October 2019, when it took 26.27% of the vote, less than two percentage points ahead of the second-ranked Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), as voters expressed their frustration over the failure of previous governments to tackle poverty, unemployment and corruption. The two parties formed a coalition government that was voted in on February 3, 2020.
Clare Nuttall in Glasgow
Levizia Vetevendosje leader Albin Kurti’s strong stance against corruption has resonated with Kosovan voters disillusioned with
the parties that have dominated the country’s politics since it declared independence in 2008, many of them headed by former commanders of
the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the guerrilla army that fought for independence from Yugoslavia.
2020 saw a break from the politics of the last 12 years as several top politicians
– among them Kosovo’s then president Hashim Thaci and Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) leader Kadri Veseli –
were indicted for war crimes and put into detention in The Hague while they await trial.
Meanwhile Vetevendosje, a left-wing nationalist party that grew out of a protest movement, has gained overwhelming popular support, especially from the younger generation of voters. Ahead
of the February 14 general election, Vetevendosje is polling at 40-50%, which will almost certainly give Kurti
a chance to form his second government.
In a speech on January 14, when he announced that Vetevendosje would
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run jointly with acting President Vjosa Osmani’s list, Kurti described the
election as a referendum on Kosovo’s future. “We have made an agreement
of political principles and goals ... for a state with justice and without corruption, for a society with health, employment and education for all citizens, without distinctions, discrimination and favours,” the Vetevendosje leader said.
Along with its neighbours in the Western Balkans, Kosovo is one of
the most corrupt countries in Europe, ranked 104th out of 180 countries and territories worldwide on Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions Index. With its economy damaged by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic last year, even before 2020 Kosovo struggled to attract international investment partly because of its long-unresolved dispute with Serbia. The lack of opportunities and high unemployment have led to large-scale emigration.
While all of the main political parties
talk of alleviating poverty and raising living standards, Vetevendosje’s policies on the economy have been specific and coherent: it wants to raise taxes on higher income groups to fund investment and