Kosovo re-elects firebrand former prime minister likely to take harder line on Serbia peace talks

Albin Kurti, leader of Kosovo's Self-Determination movement (Vetevendosje)

Credit: FLORION GOGA /REUTERS 

Kosovo saw the biggest political upset in years when voters handed a landslide general election victory to a fire-brand anti-corruption campaigner who has also rejected international pressure for detente with Serbia. 

Albin Kurti, a former prime minister who was forced to resign last year after rejecting an American plan for peace with Belgrade, secured more seats than any party before him in parliamentary elections on Sunday. 

"This great victory is an opportunity to start the changes we want," Mr Kurti said in a victory speech. He went on to call it "a referendum on justice and employment and against corruption and state capture."

Mr Kurti’s Self-Determination Movement (LVV) was set to win 48 percent of the vote, nearly doubling his take of the vote in 2019 and allowing him to form a coalition without making concessions to rival parties. 

The party emerged as a left-wing protest movement in the 2000s and is backed by many Kosovars frustrated with endemic corruption and poverty. 

His victory will be widely seen as a resounding rejection of a political class of former Kosovo Liberation Army commanders who have dominated the country ever since the 1999 war with Serbia. 

The former commanders have also been weakened by the absence of Hashim Thaci, a KLA commander who was president from 2016 to 2020. Mr Thaci was detained in November by a court in The Hague on war crimes charges dating back to the 1998-99 war.  

Mr Kurti takes a less compromising line on Serbia than Mr Thaci, and his victory is likely to worry foreign governments and diplomats hoping to broker a resolution to lingering disputes between Belgrade and Pristina. 

Mr Kurti’s previous government collapsed after just 51 days in power in March 2020 when its junior coalition partner quit following criticism from the United States.  

That came after he rejected pressure from Richard Grenell, former US president Donald Trump’s envoy on the Kosovo-Serbia dispute, to sign a peace deal with Belgrade before the US elections in November.

Kosovo and Serbia have been locked in a slow and inefficient EU-facilitated dialogue since 2011 aimed at resolving lingering issues from the conflict that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia. 

“The clear message sent by voters this time is that they do not want leaders who focus on foreign policy issues first – they want poverty, unemployment and Kosovo’s general isolation to be the priority,” said Agron Demi, a political analyst at the GAP Institute for Advanced Studies, a Pristina think tank. 

“Kurti has always caused a bit of unease among the international community, since he can’t be pressured to sign deals the way others have been before him.” 

Kosovo split from Yugoslavia in 1999 after Nato intervened in a war between the KLA and Yugoslav forces. It was run as a UN protectorate until it formally declared independence in 2008. Serbia still does not acknowledge Kosovo’s statehood.