Kosovo Anti-Establishment Party Scores Landslide Victory
Image Credits: International Business Times
Pristina, Feb 15 (AFP/APP): Kosovo’s left-wing reformists secured a landslide victory in parliamentary elections, results showed Monday, handing them a strong mandate for change from voters fed up with the political establishment.
The opposition Vetevendosje (Self-Determination) party took home around 48 percent of the vote in Sunday’s snap poll, according to the election commission. The triumph nearly doubled the party’s last electoral showing in 2019, while Kosovo’s two traditional parties suffered historic lows.
“This great victory is an opportunity to start the changes we want,” Vetevendosje’s firebrand leader Albin Kurti, long a thorn in the establishment’s side, said in a victory speech in the capital Pristina as snow fell late Sunday. “The election was indeed a referendum on justice and employment and against corruption and state capture,” the 45-year-old added, while warning of “many obstacles” ahead.
The early elections came after a tumultuous year in which the coronavirus pandemic deepened social and economic crises in the former Serbian province, which declared independence 13 years ago. Already one of Europe’s poorest economies, Kosovo is now struggling through a pandemic-triggered downturn, with vaccinations yet to start.
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