balkanalysis.com
March 15, 2011
By Anita McKinna*
The election of a man as president who has spent most of his life outside Kosovo, and who is married to a Russian, has met with questionable support amongst Kosovo’s Albanian population.
Behgjet Pacolli’s New Alliance for Kosovo (AKR) party won only 8% of the vote in December’s elections, barely even clearing the 5% threshold required for gaining seats in parliament. And the voting process for the presidency itself revealed hostility to Pacolli’s election, with opposition MPs boycotting the voting session and Hashim Thaçi having to summon his MPs to a meeting after the second round of voting, when initially 11 of his PDK MPs voted against Pacolli.
The final result was more favourable for both Thaçi and Pacolli, but Assembly Speaker Jakup Krasniqi declared that Thaçi’s mid-session meeting was unconstitutional, and went so far as to say that the solution had only been reached ‘with votes under pressure.’ Even Thaçi’s deputy, Fatmir Limaj, voiced his disapproval and declared that ‘tonight the worst possible solution was made.’ Opposition to the appointment too has been voiced by KLA veterans’ and civil society groups.
Objections within Kosovo are largely based on Pacolli’s close business connections with Russia. His Mabetex construction company has won lucrative state contracts in Russia and other former-Soviet countries, and it has been said that Pacolli’s continued business success relies on such contracts....more...
*Anita McKinna has been researching issues related to Kosovo and the Balkans since the late 1990s. She recently completed her PhD on the international administration of Kosovo at the University of Melbourne, after having attained an MPhil on the post-war reconstruction of Kosovo from Cambridge University. She has published articles on the interaction of international administrators and local political actors in post-war Kosovo in several international academic journals.
read more: balkananalysis.com
.PNG)
