KOSOVO: CENTRAL AND LOCAL ELECTIONS SET FOR

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 PRISTINA 000668 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPT FOR EUR, EUR/SCE, DRL, INL, AND S/WCI, NSC FOR BRAUN, USUN FOR DREW SCHUFLETOWSKI, USOSCE FOR STEVE STEGER E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/06/2017 TAGS: PGOV PREL KV SUBJECT: KOSOVO: CENTRAL AND LOCAL ELECTIONS SET FOR NOVEMBER 17 Classified By: COM Tina Kaidanow for reasons 1.5 (b) and (d). ¶1. (C) Summary. On August 31, UN SRSG Ruecker announced that elections will be held in Kosovo on November 17. Three ballots will be cast by voters for the central Assembly, the Municipal Assemblies, and for the first time, direct election of mayors. Additionally, Ruecker announced a five percent threshold for ethnic Albanian parties to enter the Assembly and the use of open candidate lists. Political parties have until September 12 to file these lists. The OSCE mission in Pristina has full responsibility for organizing the elections. Despite arguments to delay elections until Kosovo's final status is resolved, Ruecker decided to honor the Unity Team request to hold elections this year by the third week of November. Discussion has already begun as to whether current President of Kosovo Fatmir Sejdiu can head his LDK party list, and whether AAK leader Ramush Haradinaj, currently on trial for war crimes in The Hague, can participate at all, although UNMIK has stated that he can. USOP, through implementing partners IFES and NDI, plans to support the OSCE-led process through voter education and get out the vote campaigns, and to mount its own observation effort. It is unlikely that the Kosovo Serbs will participate in significant numbers in any of the three elections; to potentially affect this, we will need to weigh in with Belgrade sooner rather than later. END SUMMARY. ¶2. (C) In an August 28 meeting with USOP, SRSG Ruecker and PDSRSG Schook previewed UNMIK's plan to announce elections that week and to designate November 17 as election day. Ruecker reviewed the various arguments, pro and con, for holding elections prior to status. Ultimately, he felt that elections could no longer be held hostage to various political interests, and, given the letter he had received from the Unity Team August 15 requesting that elections be held by the third week of November, he decided to honor that request and move ahead. After receiving the support of the Contact Group, Ruecker made his announcement on August 31, setting September 12 as the deadline for parties to file their candidate lists. Nuts and Bolts -------------- �A;¶3. (C) Following up on his Executive Decision 2007/44 of August 16 which authorized the Central Election Commission to begin preparations for elections, Ruecker issued two new regulations on August 30. Regulation 2007/25 amends Regulation 2004/9 and determines the composition of the Central Election Commission (CEC). The CEC will have 12 members. The President of Kosovo will nominate a Commissioner who will act as Deputy Chairperson and will be chosen from among the sitting judges of the Supreme Court. Six Commissioners will be appointed by the SRSG based on nominations received from the six largest political parties represented in the Assembly. One Commissioner will come from the Serb community and three will come from the other minority communities. The OSCE ambassador in Kosovo (i.e, the Deputy SRSG for Institution Building) will also be a Commissioner and act as Chairperson. ¶4. (U) Regulation 2007/26 amends Regulation 2004/12 allowing the SRSG to set and announce the date of the election (November 17). It declares that candidate lists will be "open lists," meaning that -- for the first time in Kosovo -- a voter can select the 10 candidates he or she prefers from the list of the political party for which he votes. The regulation specifies that all candidate lists must be comprised of at least 30 percent women. Significantly, it also sets a threshold of five percent of total valid votes for an ethnic Albanian political party to enter the Assembly. Twenty seats are reserved for minorities (ten Serb and ten other minorities),in keeping with the Ahtisaari-envisioned structure of the Assembly. The term in office for the Kosovo Assembly will be four years. ¶5. (C) The regulation establishing the direct election of mayors will be issued in the near future. It will likely set the term in office at two years for both the mayor and the Municipal Assembly for this election only, with subsequent terms set at four years. The rationale for this is twofold: to stagger elections such that, in future, municipal elections and central elections are not held co-terminously; PRISTINA 00000668 002 OF 003 and to encourage quicker implementation of the Ahtisaari plan, which, once the relevant legislation is passed, will require redrawing municipal boundaries and re-running municipal elections to create new, Serb-majority municipalities with corresponding local administrations. ¶6. (C) The OSCE mission has full responsibility for organizing these elections. OSCE in Pristina has expressed concern over the compressed preparation period and initially suggested that elections be split into two, central and municipal, in order to adequately prepare. Because OSCE is running the elections, ODIHR (the election observations arm of OSCE) will not be leading the election observation mission. The Council of Europe has been invited to take on this role. USOP and other internationals on the ground will also field monitoring teams in November. (Comment: OSCE will have its hands full to make these complicated elections, with three ballots to cast and hundreds of candidates to consider, understandable to the Kosovo voter. USOP, through USAID implementers IFES and NDI, will pitch in by getting involved in voter education and get out the vote campaigns.) Top of the Ticket -------------- ¶7. (C) As parties are scrambling to pull their lists together, they are putting their most well-known candidate at the top. This creates difficulties for the ruling LDK party, whose current leader is the President of Kosovo, Fatmir Sejdiu. It is not clear whether Sejdiu can run for the Assembly while remaining Kosovo's president, and what the consequences would be if he wins a seat (which would be almost guaranteed). The Central Elections Commission and the OSCE, most likely, will have to make a final determination. ¶8. (C) UNMIK ruled on September 5 that Ramush Haradinaj, head of the AAK party and currently on trial at The Hague for war crimes, can participate in the elections and head the AAK's list. According to the Kosovo Constitutional Framework, "a candidate would be disqualified if serving a prison term on a conviction by the ICTY or had been indicted by the ICTY and did not appear before the same." This decision has caused some consternation among Serbs and reportedly also elicited unhappiness from the ICTY. In another recent development, current Prime Minister and AAK member Agim Ceku has stated publicly that he will not run in these elections, though he has not ruled out the possibility of accepting an office if offered one by whatever government is formed post-elections (Kosovo's constitutional framework does not require that ministers hold a seat in parliament). Serb Participation -------------- ¶9. (C) Despite creative calculations by some suggesting that Kosovar Serbs, given the 5 percent threshold, could gain several additional seats in the Kosovo Assembly should their turnout be high and Albanian turnout be low, it is unlikely that Kosovo Serbs will participate in significant numbers, particularly in central elections. In conversations with COM and other USOP officers, Kosovo Serb leaders have indicated they will take direction from Belgrade on whether or not to participate, with the assumption on their part being they will be told to stay away. There are some hints, however, that given the go-ahead from Belgrade, local Serbs would be willing to run in at least municipal elections, since they fear that independent Serb candidates -- perhaps running in tandem with or in coalition with Albanian parties -- could sweep municipal seats in the event of a general Serb boycott and set up competing municipal administrations. ¶10. (C) COMMENT: USOP supports SRSG Ruecker's decision to move ahead on elections. Municipal elections have been delayed for nearly a year already, and even with the complicating factor of Kosovo's unresolved status, the democratic process cannot be put on hold indefinitely. Nor would Kosovo's opposition likely consent to remain part of a unified negotiating team for status discussions if their opportunity to gain power democratically were pushed off for many more months. We will do our part to assist OSCE in making these elections as transparent and comprehensible to the Kosovo voter as possible, and we will hold Kosovo's leaders to their pledge not to use the Ahtisaari package or PRISTINA 00000668 003 OF 003 the final status process as a political football during the campaign. We are fairly certain Kosovo Serbs will not participate in these elections, especially at the central level. However, if we want to make a pitch to Belgrade to encourage Serb participation, and given the very tight deadlines involved in party registration, we need to mobilize this effort immediately. To be most effective, we recommend it be a joint Contact Group effort. END COMMENT. KAIDANOW