Albanians Face Losing Seat in Serbian Parliament
Albanian leader in southern serbia says he will go to court if his community loses its one seat in the national parliament.
Of six ethnic minority parties that competed in Serbia's general elections on May 6, four have entered the parliament, winning eight seats.
The Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians, which won 1.77 per cent of the overall votes, will have most of them - five seats.
The Party of Democratic Action of Sandzak, which represents Bosniaks, or Muslims, won one mandate, as did the Together coalition, which represents Hungarians, Croats and Slovaks and a Vlach minority party.
Some minority parties joined pre-election coalitions with major parties, such as the Democratic Party and Serbian Progressive Party.
The Social Democratic Party of Serbia, which represents Bosniaks, and the Democratic League of Croats in Vojvodina, ran in coalition with the Democrats, while the Roma Party was in coalition with the Progressives.
While the threshold to enter parliament is 5 per cent of the votes, this does not apply to ethnic minority parties.
They enter the parliament if they pass so-called natural threshold, which is calculated by dividing the number of voters who voted in the elections by number of seats in the parliament, which is 250.
But so far the lists of the Coalition of Albanians of the Presevo Valley and the Montenegrin Party have not passed the threshold.
Riza Halimi, leader of the Coalition of Albanians of the Presevo Valley, the only Albanian in the last parliament, hopes one representative of his community will get in.
He says that the natural threshold is about 13,800 votes and that his party, according to his calculations, won about 15,000 votes.
But Halimi said the results from some polling stations had not been sent to the Republic Election Commission in time.
“According to our calculations we have passed the threshold and now we are waiting for the Republic Election Commission to see what will happen," he said.
"If the final results show that our calculations are right, and the Commission does not award us a seat we’ll go to the court,” Halimi told Balkan Insight.
The deadline for the Republic Election Commission to announce the final results for the general and presidential elections expires at 8pm on May 10.
After the the 2008 elections, Vojvodina Hungarians won four mandates, a coalition of Bosniak parties won two seats and a coalition of Albanian parties won one.
Election Background
Serbian Elections 2012: What's at stake
This spring almost 7 million Serbians are entitled to vote in presidential, general, provincial and local elections.
Two Decades of Election Tumult in Serbia
Since the renewal of multi-party politics in 1990 power has oscillated between a variety of parties in Serbia and votes have often followed by allegations of frauds and protests.
Key Parties in Serbia
Twelve years after the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic, the scene has changed significantly as parties rise, fall and change their minds. See Balkan Insight's profiles of Serbia's ruling and opposition parties.
Serbian Presidential Elections Since 1990
Since the first multi-party elections were held in 1990, Serbia has often had acting heads of state, while many of those elected ended their terms before their mandates expired.
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