Municipal elections 2002

Result: clear but incremental change

Kosovo completed its second municipal elections on 26 October, nudging its political scene toward a new, more competitive era and setting the stage for the next four years of local government.
Thirty separate contests were held, one in each of Kosovo's municipalities, with the most diverse group of choices yet put before Kosovo's voters: a total of 68 political parties, coalitions, independent candidates and citizens' initiatives competed for seats in Municipal Assemblies. Forty of them won seats on the assemblies, up from 14 different entities elected to at least one seat in 2000.
This was the first municipal election for Kosovo Serbs, as they did not take part two years ago. While several municipalities showed very active participation by Serb voters this year, turnout was hampered, among other issues, by lingering doubts and questions over what kind of plan for decentralszation would be implemented after election day.

Kosovo Albanians also saw a drop in turnout, but at the same time the gaps between major parties narrowed and the races for seats on municipal assemblies become more competitive - just the kind of thing to spur politicians to make government better serve the people.

Overall participation was 53.9 per cent, with over 711,000 votes cast out of 1.32 million people registered both in and out of Kosovo. While this looks like a steep drop from the 79 per cent turnout recorded in 2000, the number mostly reflects the strong growth in the electorate, as nearly 400,000 people took advantage of the opportunity to register during the past two years. In the event the total number of ballots cast declined by 8 per cent. This is not altogether surprising, considering this is Kosovo's third election in just over two years; while for many Kosovo Serbs it was their third election in three months, coming on the heels of the two rounds of the Serbian presidential elections.
This year was also the first time that all communities participated, and will now have elected representatives on municipal assemblies. Two years ago, in the three Serb-majority municipalities in northern Kosovo where there was a lack of participation, municipal assemblies were formed through appointments by the then SRSG Bernard Kouchner rather than consisting of elected representatives.
The only contest boycotted by Kosovo Serbs this year was in Mitrovica, which will have no elected Serb representatives in the municipal assembly. Moreover, the scarcity of voters at the polls indicates that Mitrovica's Serbs were not convinced to vote following publicising of Michael Steiner's seven point plan for resolving the ethnic conflict over the divided city. The repercussions of the boycott were immediately felt throughout Kosovo, as UNMIK's broader plan for decentralisation was put on hold. The SRSG had invited leaders from all over Kosovo to a conference on the issue on 1 November in Gnjilane, but postponed it due to the election results.

Those that did take part in the elections confirmed again their clear preference for the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), which won more than 320,000 votes, or 46 per cent of all ballots cast. More important for the party, given Kosovo's clearly ethnically identified political entities, is its relative standing among other Kosovo Albanian entities. Here the LDK scored an absolute majority overall with 51 per cent of the Kosovo Albanian electorate, but continued to see its share erode from 59.2 per cent in 2000 and 53.8 per cent in the 2001 election for the Kosovo-wide Assembly.

That decline has cost LDK outright majorities in nine out of 20 municipal assemblies where it has governed since 2000. However, of those, only Malishevo is definitively out its grasp after the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) won 17 of 31 seats. In the other eight municipalities, no single entity won a majority, leaving LDK potentially in the running to form coalitions necessary to elect the presidents and vice-presidents of the municipal assemblies.

In Gjakova, Peja and Klina, LDK could easily partner up with its ally, Mark Krasniqi's Albanian Christian Democratic Party of Kosovo (PSHDK), to form majorities in these municipal assemblies. But Lipljan and Decani appear up for grabs, and within reach for the PDK and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) if they join forces.

AAK's strong showing of 15 seats in Decani, party leader Ramush Haradinaj's home town, looks set to give the party its first municipal assembly president - and its first chance to show what kind of alternative to the two largest parties it can present to the electorate.

More complex coalitions will need to be formed in four other municipalities: Prizren, Dragash, Kamenica and Orahovac. While LDK has the largest number of seats in each of these municipalities, the larger number of entities represented in these municipal assemblies leave a wide variety of possible combinations according to the mathematics of building majorities.

Štrpce is another municipality where a broad alliance will have to be fashioned to elect the leaders of the municipal assembly. Following the Serb boycott of the 2000 municipal elections, PDK won an outright majority on the assembly, despite the municipality's majority Serb population. This year however, Štrpce ranked first in turnout as over 69 per cent of the electorate cast ballots, a figure apparently boosted by the competition between ethnic communities. The result, however, is the most fragmented assembly in Kosovo, with nine political entities taking seats on the 17-member local legislature - while no entity has a clear lead with two Serb entities tied with three seats each.
One interesting trend has developed in these elections that may be instructive to politicians in future races: voters clearly cast a choice for small, locally based parties and initiatives that ran only in their municipality rather than the many small parties centred around specific ideologies that ran in many different municipalities.

For example, Gjergj Dedaj's perennial effort leading the Liberal Party of Kosovo (PLK) yielded just one seat in Gjakova out of all the 24 municipalities where it was on the ballot. At the same time, the Democratic Union of Gjakova (UDGJ) won twice as many seats in the same municipality, despite being a brand new party not affiliated with parties in other municipalities.

Overall, 33 seats were won by 19 single-municipality contenders, compared with just four seats won by the 12 smallest parties with a broader, more ideological focus. "Single-municipality entities have stolen the show from the small parties and became a real alternative to the big parties in this election," said Kerry Monaghan of OSCE's Department of Election Operations.

Another noteworthy aspect of Municipal Elections 2002 was the successful continuation of using the Saint-Lague formula of proportional representation. Though less conventional than the d'Hondt formula, the mathematics of turning votes into seats using Saint-Lague is beneficial to smaller political entities. In a place like Kosovo, with a wide diversity of small ethnic groups and a pronounced tendency to vote along ethnic lines, securing representation for smaller entities has been a priority in the last three elections.

Concretely, in this year's elections, only three parties would have benefited from using the d'Hondt formula: LDK, PDK and the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS). The votes they would have gained would have been taken from 29 of Kosovo's smallest political entities, many of which represent smaller minorities such as Turks, Bosniaks and Gorani. Furthermore, political diversity would have been further curtailed if the d'Hondt formula had been used because seven political entities would have lost all their seats on Municipal Assemblies.

Ultimately, though, it is people, not formulas, that make politics. Win or lose, the democratic process must be respected and the decision of the voters implemented in the composition of municipal assemblies and the formation of local governments. As the second municipal elections in Kosovo's new democracy, these elections will mark the first test of politicians' readiness to hand over power in several municipalities. In some cases this will mean vacating office for a long-standing political rival or for a winning candidate from a different ethnic group. But the voters have had their say - and passed their test - so let their leaders do the same.

By Jeff Bieley,
OSCE Public Information Officer