New Votes Unlikely to Alter Kosovo Poll Result
Fresh elections in three disputed municipalities on Sunday are not expected to significantly dent the triumph of Hashim Thaci's ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo.
Kosovo's Central Election Commission, CEC, ordered new votes to take place in the PDK strongholds of Skenderaj and Drenas after dubiously high turnouts of 94 and 86 per cent respectively were reported, prompting accusations of election fraud.
New elections are scheduled also in Decan municipality and in two polling stations, one in Malisheve and one in Lipjan. The campaign will be brief. Starting on Wednesday, it ends on Friday at midnight.
According to the CEC's overall preliminary results, the PDK garnered 33.5 per cent of the votes in the December general election. Its former coalition partner, the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, came second on 23.6 per cent.
A political commentator from Mitrovica, Nexhmedin Spahiu, said the new elections held in the three municipalities would encounter the same problems on Sunday that they had in December.
"Since no commissioners from the parties have been punished for vote manipulation in the first round, I don't see why other people won't feel encouraged to do the same again," Spahiu told Balkan Insight.
He added that many parties will not feel very interested in observing the new elections, since they are taking place in PDK bastions. "The re-run elections are only important for the PDK internally, to see which candidates are gaining more votes," he said.
Kosovo's Counting and Results Centre, CRC, has already finished a re-count of 760 disputed ballot boxes, where there were reports of irregularities.
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Mike
You never know when you might get that hushed call from the man with the New Jersey brogue telling you that you are about to become president.
The Importance of Elections
Hashim Assange
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Kosovo Elections 2010: Key Facts
Around 1.6million people out of an estimated population of 2million are eligible to vote on December 12, although hundreds of thousands of registered Kosovars live outside of the country and thousands of dead people remain on the electoral roll.
