The latest political crisis to hit Kosovo over the position of the next speaker of the Kosovo parliament is pushing the country towards an unprecedented crisis, experts have warned, according to AFP news agency. After more than 50 attempts, Kosovo MPs now have just one day to comply with a Constitutional Court ruling to elect a new speaker of parliament, a key step towards Albin Kurti's possible return to office.
“This is an unprecedented situation, a void and an undefined chaos,” law professor Mazllum Baraliu told AFP. Although Kurti’s Vetëvendosje party topped the February election, it did not win the necessary seats to appoint its elected leader, Albulena Haxhiu — a choice that opponents see as too political for the role. Baraliu said that instead of cooperating to protect the state, 120 MPs had “violated” it. “This is absurd,” he said.
Without a speaker, parliament cannot be formed and no new ministers, including the prime minister, can be sworn in - forcing Kurti to take on a caretaker role for more than five months. “The assembly has turned into a circus of democracy,” said Eugen Cakolli, from the independent monitor the Kosovo Democratic Institute. “Without a doubt, it is one of the most serious, longest and most consequential crises in Kosovo’s recent political history,” Cakolli said.
There is usually no legal deadline for how long this can continue. “Citizens will pay the highest price from this political experiment that risks plunging the country into an institutional dead end,” said economist Safet Gerxhaliu. He added that, faced with ongoing sanctions and a “frozen” European Union membership process, the situation was alarming for the continent’s newest country. “Kosovo has been forgotten by the EU,” Gerxhaliu said.
The lack of a functional government also meant that Kosovo risked losing more than 883 million euros in EU funds, said Njomza Arifi, a researcher at the Pristina-based think tank Group for Law and Politics. (A2 Televizion)
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