The leader of the Vetëvendosje Movement, Albin Kurti, insisted on Saturday that he will not change the candidate for Speaker of the Parliament, despite the lack of votes, saying that the appointment of the Speaker of Parliament and the formation of the new Parliament is the duty of all parliamentary parties.
"The Assembly is not established by the winner, regardless of whether he is the absolute or relative winner, the Assembly is established by everyone together; by the first place together with the second, third place and the Serbian and non-Serbian minorities," Kurti said on Saturday, speaking at a meeting of the party's General Council.
Three months after the February 9 elections, Kosovo continues to be without a functional Assembly, as MPs have failed thirteen times in a row to constitute a new Assembly.
The Vetëvendosje Movement came first, winning 48 seats, 13 short of the minimum 61 needed to govern alone.
Although dozens of sessions have been called to constitute the Assembly, political divisions have continuously hindered this process.
Vetëvendosje is failing to secure the 61 votes needed to elect Albulena Haxhiu to the position of Speaker of the Assembly.
Haxhiu is seen by the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) as a "divisive figure," while the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) says it will not support any Vetëvendosje candidate for speaker of parliament.
But Kurti - a day before the next session on Sunday - reiterated that Vetëvendosje does not intend to bring forward any other candidate besides Haxhiu.
"Our proposal is Albulena Haxhiu, while others will propose their candidate when it is their turn. As the winner of the elections, the position of mayor belongs to us," Kurti said.
Haxhiu failed in six sessions to get more than 57 votes, and after that, in subsequent sessions, the chairman of the session – who comes from Vetëvendosje – proposed the formation of a commission to oversee the secret ballot for speaker.
Kurti criticized the parliamentary parties – PDK, LDK, AAK, NISMA and the Serbian List – for not participating in the vote, making the formation of the commission impossible.
"We have not blocked, because we have proposed our candidate. If they had not done so, we would have been blocking. We have not blocked, because we voted for, the blockers are those who vote against or do not vote at all to prevent a quorum," Kurti added.
"There is no institutional or political crisis in Kosovo"
Successive failures to constitute a new Assembly have deepened the country's political impasse, raising concerns about institutional paralysis and are seen as a test of Kosovo's state maturity.
Gëzim Visoka, professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Dublin in Ireland, told Radio Free Europe that the current crisis and political paralysis created in Kosovo should serve as an incentive to rethink and rebuild political culture.
He emphasized that this is a test of Kosovo's maturity as a state, and of its ability to change governments and powers without international intervention or supervision.
"It is paradoxical that the current parties have called for Kosovo's independence from international supervision, but are now having difficulty making it functional and self-sustaining," Visoka said.
But Kurti - the acting prime minister - rejected these assessments, saying that Kosovo has functional institutions.
"In Kosovo we do not have an institutional or political crisis. In Kosovo we have a certain constitutional vacuum. We do not have a crisis because the mechanisms and institutions of the state function," Kurti said.
"Kosovo has a Government, a Prime Minister and ministers in office, but Kosovo does not have an Assembly. There cannot be a new Government without a new Assembly," he added.
Despite some recent moves to break the deadlock, there is no agreement between parliamentary parties.
LDK, which came in third, winning 20 seats, has rejected Vetëvendosje's offer for a governing coalition.
Instead, LDK leader Lumir Abdixhiku has called for the formation of a transitional government among parliamentary parties until the country's president is appointed, i.e. in April 2026, when the current president Vjosa Osmani's term ends.
While Vetëvendosje has immediately opposed the idea of such a government, other parliamentary parties have expressed willingness to talk.
Kurti reiterated his party's stance on Saturday, saying that "we want a functional, not a transitional, government."
The decline in the media freedom index
Kurti rejected the findings in the annual report on press freedom in Kosovo by the organization Reporters Without Borders, saying that there is no lack of press freedom in Kosovo, and called on the media to "reform and improve."
Kosovo has recorded the biggest decline in the last 15 years in the annual press freedom index of the organization Reporters Without Borders, ranking 99th in the world out of 180 countries.
"The deep decline in the media index is regrettable. In Kosovo there is freedom of expression and freedom of the media, I am a witness to this from experience and life here," Kurti said.
He said that his government during the past four-year mandate "has stopped funding the media so as not to influence them, and we do not have any media owners in the government so as not to control them."
"In Kosovo, the media are free, the situation they have fallen into is not a result of the influence of the Government, but of the control of the owners and the lack of professionalism. The responsibility lies with the media, it is up to them to reform, which means wanting to reform and improve, which means wanting to improve," he said./ REL (A2 Televizion)
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