3. April. 2017. | 01:43

Election Night in Mitrovica Social Club

On Sunday, 2nd of April, NGO AKTIV organasied the election night and a debate in Mitrovica Social Club. Panelists at the debate commented on the presidential campaigns, the first results of the elections and tried to predict the future of the relations between Prishtina and Belgrade ahead of the changes that the election may bring.

The panelists at the discussion were:

• Sanji Sovrlić, journalist of RTV Mir from Leposavić
• Dejan Nedeljković, tourism economist
• Shpetim Gashi, Vice President of the Council for Inclusive Governance

RTV MIR journalist, Sanja Sovrlić, stated that fear and hope were the prevailing emotions of these presidential elections in Serbia. Fear because of the number of threats the citizens received and thet were reported on social media; and hope because of the fact that, according to her opinion, this was the first time in a while that Serbia had a wide choice of candidates to choose from among which there were worthy people. She criticized heavily the media who, in her opinion, were not fair as they purposefully allowed Prime Minister Vučić to misuse his position for the purposes of his campaign. Sovrlić also stated that “Kosovo election models” started being employed in Serbia as well, and that she was not surprised by the reports of many irregularities on the polling stations.

Sanja Sovrlić passed her personal observations from the interviews with the presidential candidates Saša Janković and Vuk Jeremić and told the audience that Jeremić was easily deconcentrated and irritated by the movements of the cameraman during the interview, and that Saša Janković was very well prepared for the interview given the fact that he did not request to see the questions in advance. Sovrlić kept strong focus on Kosovo during both interviews because it happened for the first time in a while that Kosovo was not one of the central topics of the presidential campaign.

Dejan Nedeljković on the other hand, stated that apart from the collective voting which is a practice established during the local Kosovo elections in 2013, no major irregularities were observed on the polling stations throughout Kosovo. In addition to this, he stressed that this years’ campaign was marked by media and institutional darkness. Nedeljković believes that apathy is the cause of the poor turnout and after the announcement of the results he was forced to admit that the worst campaign was led by Vuk Jeremić, whom he openly supported.

When asked about how the presidential elections were perceived in Pristina, if at all, Shpetim Gashi stated that these presidential elections were not really a topic in Pristina in the way that the presidential elections in 2012 were. He explained that the reason for this lied in the fact that these elections had far more predictable outcome that would bring no changes in the politics towards Kosovo. Gashi stated that the largest problem of Serbian political system lies in the fact that it often happens that President’s and Prime Minister’s positions are made equal which creates a constitutional mistake which is unfavourable for the development of democracy and opposition. Gashi concluded that Aleksandar Vučić’s win is a very good news for Hashim Thaci who is currently on the margins of political life in Prishtina. Gashi expects that the Brussels negotiations will from now on be led at the presidential level which will bring back Thaci’s political relevance.

Mitrovica Social Club discussion are organised as part of the project Provide sustainable framework for civic participation and democratic decision-making on local and central institutional level in Kosovo.

This grant is financed as part of the Democratioc Society Promotion program (DSPsupported by the Swiss Cooperation Office in Kosovo (SCO-K) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of (DANIDA), managed by Kosovar Civil Society Foundation (KCSF).