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Kosovo Early Assembly Elections 2021 Final Report and Recommendations UK Election Expert Mission March 2021

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Kosovo Early Assembly Elections 2021 Final Report and Recommendations UK Election Expert Mission March 2021 Kosovo Early Assembly Elections 2021 Final Report and Recommendations UK Election Expert Mission March 2021 0 This report ‘Kosovo Early Assembly Elections 2021: Final Report and Recommendations’ is the product of Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD). It was made possible through funding received from the British Embassy in Pristina. This paper was written by an expert team consisting of Dominic Howell, Darko Aleksov, Dritan Taulla and Novak Pešić and was published in March 2021. The views expressed in the paper are those of the authors, and not necessarily those of or endorsed by the institutions mentioned in the paper, nor of the UK Government, which does not accept responsibility for such views or information, or any reliance placed on them. 1 Contents 1 Executive summary 5 1.1 About the Mission 7 2 Political Background 8 3 Voter list 10 3.1 Problems and recommendations 11 4 Controversies concerning candidature 12 4.1 Problems and recommendations 12 5 The election campaign 14 5.1 General campaigning conditions 14 5.2 Kosovo-Albanians’ campaign 15 5.3 Summary of social media analysis (main findings in annex). 16 5.4 Kosovo-Serbs’ campaign 17 5.5 Kosovo-Bosniaks’ campaign 18 5.6 Kosovo-Turks’ campaign 19 5.7 Kosovo-Romas’, Ashkalis’ and Egyptians’ campaigns 19 5.8 Kosovo-Goranis’ campaign 20 5.9 Campaign violations and fines 20 5.10 General problems and recommendations 23 5.11 Problems and recommendations for non-majority communities 24 6 Campaign finance 26 6.1 Problems and recommendations 27 7 COVID-19 compliance 29 7.1 Problems and recommendations 29 8 Kosovo-Albanian language media 30 8.1 Overview 30 8.2 Campaign coverage in the media 30 8.3 Access and political boycotts 33 8.4 Online media 33 8.5 Problems and recommendations 33 9 Kosovo-Serb and Republic of Serbia media 35 2 9.1 Overview 35 9.2 Campaign coverage in the media 35 9.3 Access and political boycotts 35 9.4 Problems and recommendations 36 10 Diaspora voting 37 10.1 Legal framework 38 10.2 Registration 39 10.3 Appeals 41 10.4 Voting 42 10.5 Counting 43 10.6 Problems and recommendations 44 11 Gender 46 11.1 Candidates and quota 46 11.2 Prominence of female candidates in campaign 49 11.3 Problems and recommendations 50 12 Central Election Commission 52 12.1 Composition 52 12.2 Performance 52 12.3 Problems and recommendations 53 13 Legal environment 55 13.1 ECAP decisions 55 13.1 Problems and recommendations 55 14 Election day 56 14.1 Problems and recommendations 56 15 Count and Results Centre 57 15.1 Problems and recommendations 58 16 Role of civil society organisations 59 16.1 Problems and recommendations 60 17 Exit polls 62 17.1 Problems and recommendations 63 18 Analysis of results 64 3 18.1 Turnout 64 18.2 Kosovo-Albanian parties results and reactions 65 18.3 Non-majority parties’ results and reactions 66 18.4 Problems and recommendation 70 19 UK EEM Recommendations 71 20 Annex on social media data 82 20.1 Popularity of top 20 Kosovo politicians from the start of the campaign (3 Feb.) to election day. 82 20.2 Popularity of top 20 Kosovo politicians from 15 Feb to the certification of results. 83 20.3 Change in number of Facebook engagements for the five main politicians (Kurti, Osmani, Hoti, Hoxhaj, and Haradinaj) over the period from1 January to 1 March 2021. 84 20.4 Popularity of top 20 political parties from the start of the campaign (3 Feb.) to election day (14 Feb.). 85 20.5 Correlation between Facebook posts engagements for a political party and the votes the party received in the 14 Feb. election (r=0.91). 86 20.6 Popularity of top political parties from the day after election day (15 Feb.) to the certification of results (12 Mar.). 87 20.7 Change in number of Facebook engagements and ranking for the key politicians (heads of Kosovo-Albanian parties that gained seats in the Assembly and the Prime Minister) and larger parties between the campaign period and the post election period (until the certification of results). 88 20.8 Top eight most popular posts on Facebook by politicians 89 From the start of the campaign to election day (3 – 14 February 2021) 89 20.9 List of online portals followed by the UK EEM 89 21 Annex – ECAP fines on breaches of the Code of Conduct during campaigning 93 22 Acronyms 97 22.1 Parties taking part in the 2021 elections 97 22.2 Other acronyms 98 4 1 Executive summary These elections, although intensely contested, successfully managed to reduce some of the pressures caused by the political events since the previous early elections, held in October 2019. The technical conduct of the in-country voting in most areas was good, although some aspects of campaigning and voting in Kosovo-Serb majority municipalities fell far short of Kosovo’s legal safeguards and international commitments. The assessment of the UK Election Expert Mission is that these elections also demonstrated long-standing significant legislative and practical deficiencies concerning out-of-country registration, voting and counting. These elections also revealed that the structural system of guaranteed seats designed to ensure the representation of non-majority communities will require constitutional reforms in the future. The political campaign among the Kosovo-Albanian parties was vibrant and allowed for democratic choice. However, in the Kosovo-Serb community the conditions for genuine democratic competition are severely stifled by the one-party dominance of Srpska Lista. The short duration of early election official campaigns and legislative loopholes lead to a lack of campaign expenditure transparency. The discretion of the Central Election Commission, due in part to legislative ambiguity, results in its decisions being seen as politicised. This was exacerbated by the statements of some key politicians. Election day was regarded by the media and many in the Kosovo-Albanian community as the least problematic held so far in the country. They are also considered a turning point in which, for the first time, a government has been elected without being formed at least in part by one or both of the two major traditional parties of LDK and PDK. Some have commented that this democratic turnover was accomplished, for the first time, without the large-scale presence of international observers. The Mission broadly agrees in terms of the conduct of the election day in the Kosovo-Albanian majority areas, while noting that the widespread expectation that there would be a clear winner made these elections less open to election day intrigues than previous, or perhaps future ones. However, the opportunities for democratic choice continue to shrink in the Kosovo-Serb communities. There was insufficient observation in some ‘hot-spots’ in non-majority areas, which combined with Kosovo-Albanian political parties’ lack of commitment to making use of the electoral safeguards in these areas, meant that the democratic and electoral practices in some parts of the country do not meet the international standards to which Kosovo has committed itself. Of greatest constitutional threat is the vulnerability of the electoral system for the guaranteed non-majority seats to malign interference by larger communities. These elections were held against the backdrop of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. However, many of the health regulations were generally ignored by most participants in the campaign and by many stakeholders on election day. 5 The four-week process of verifying, counting, tabulating and re-counting of ballots before certification of results risks is too long – particularly given the lack of transparency in the process. Some inaccuracies were revealed in the counting of preference votes. The Mission supports the 23 recommendations made by the EU Election Observation Mission for the previous Assembly elections in 2019, of which two concerning the Independent Media Commission were partially implemented. These elections further demonstrated the need for comprehensive legal reform noted by previous missions. Among the UK Election Expert Mission’s reinforcement of previous international recommendations and additional findings following these elections are the following key conclusions: ● The Law on General Elections and in some cases the Constitution need amending to provide greater legal certainty for candidature, registration of parties and financial reporting by them and to extend the official campaign period for early elections. ● Out-of-country registration requires urgent reform, including online registration. The opportunities for voting should be increased by permitting postal voting within the countries of residence of the diaspora. ● The incoming Assembly should also consider after two successive elections in which it took four weeks or more to certify final results, and in both of which there were limited cases of miscounting of individual preference votes, whether electronic voting and/or counting and also removing conditional voting would be helpful in order to speed up the unwarranted length of the tabulation, audit and re-counting process. ● The system of the guaranteed representation of non-majority communities has been weakened by the abuse of the spirit of the Constitution through the seemingly coordinated control of voters’ choices which harmed the rights of Kosovo-Serbs to vote freely, and denied Kosovo-Bosniaks, Kosovo-Gorani and Kosovo-Roma their Constitutional rights to determine their own representatives. It also impacted on the Kosovo-Ashkali and Kosovo- Egyptian communities, one of which likely lost a seat as a result. While noting that the Election Complaints and Appeals Panel and the Supreme Court in their judgements on these issues sought to uphold the spirit of the Constitution, there did not appear to be harmony between the letter and spirit of the law and Constitution.
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