Kosovo's ethnic Serb party says its ban from a parliamentary election is 'political violence'

PRISTINA, Kosovo — Kosovo’s main ethnic Serb party on Tuesday said its ban from the upcoming general election is “institutional and political violence” against the ethnic minority.

Zlatan Elek of Srpska Lista, or Serb List, said the move was “done on the orders of Albin in order to gain some easy political points,” adding they would appeal the decision. Elek was referring to Kosovo’s prime minister, Albin Kurti.

The Central Election Commission declined to certify Srpska Lista, justifying the move by pointing to its nationalist stance and close ties to Serbia.

The Srspka Lista party has nine out of the 10 lawmakers the ethnic Serb minority currently has in the 120-seat parliament.

Kosovo holds a parliamentary election on Feb. 9, which is expected to be a key test for Kurti, whose governing party won in a landslide in 2021. European Union-facilitated negotiations to normalize ties with neighboring Serbia are a top priority for any Cabinet in power after the polls.

Western powers also expressed concern about the move, fearing it may further aggravate the already tense ties between Kosovo and Serbia.

Kosovo was a Serbian province until a war broke out between Serbian government forces and ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, which left about 11,400 dead, mainly ethnic Albanians. NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign in 1999 ended the war and pushed Serbian forces out. Kosovo proclaimed independence in 2008, which Serbia doesn’t recognize.

Belgrade still considers Kosovo as its province and has a major influence on the ethnic Serb minority living there.

Serb President Aleksandar Vučić criticized the move to ban the party, saying “Kurti is trying to root out the Serb people from (our) southern province.”

Kurti considers the Srpska Lista as the “political branch of Milan Radoicic and of Serb state terrorism.”

Radoicic, a politician and wealthy businessman with ties to Serbia’s ruling populist party and Vučić, was among 45 people charged in Kosovo in connection with a gunfight last year in which a Kosovar police officer was killed following an incursion by heavily armed Serb gunmen. He is free and under investigation in Serbia, which refuses to extradite him to Kosovo.

The prime minister accused the Serb party of being behind all the incidents in the four northern municipalities, where most of the ethnic Serb minority lives.

“Srpska Lista unfortunately represents Serbia's widest and the highest level of intervention into Kosovo’s internal affairs and in our democratic elections,” he said at a news conference.

Kurti accused Belgrade of being behind two terrorist groups on their “planning, financing and offering logistics” to commit terror attacks in Kosovo.

Vučić has planned other attacks in Kosovo during the new year festivities and Orthodox Christmas to deflect attention from the “internal tensions in Serbia, the continuous opposing protests,” according to Kurti.

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Semini reported from Tirana, Albania.