Kosovo opposition demands repeat of "marred" elections (Roundup)

Dec 16, 2010, 13:10 GMT

Pristina, Kosovo - Kosovo's leading opposition party said Thursday that fraud marred last Sunday's early parliamentary elections - to the extent that the vote should be repeated.

According to incomplete, preliminary results from the central election commission, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci's Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) won the most votes, collecting 33.5 per cent.

But the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), second with 23.6 per cent of the votes, along with other opposition parties, accused PDK of cheating through multiple voting, particularly in Thaci's strongholds of Drenas and Skenderaj.

'Serious violations in at least seven municipalities jeopardized the election in general,' a spokesman for the LDK, Arben Gashi, told the German Press Agency dpa.

He spoke as a Thursday evening deadline for election authorities to respond to complaints neared.

'If we want a truly democratic process, we must repeat the vote Kosovo-wide. It is not enough to repeat the election just on some municipalities,' Gashi said. He charged that 'ballots were also rigged in large numbers' elsewhere.

The third-placed Self-Determination party and the fourth-strongest, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo also complained of massive violations in Sunday's vote.

Daily Koha Ditore on Thursday however quoted election commission head Valdete Daka as saying that law envisages a repeat vote only in polling stations where irregularities were recorded.

After initially congratulating Kosovo for an incident-free election, the European Union took a neutral stance regarding the allegations of electoral fraud, saying it was waiting for all possible steps in the election process to be exhausted.

'We are waiting for the election process to conclude. It's still running its course, and we wait to see the final result before we say anything further,' EU spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic said.

'The rules need to be respected, we all recognize that, and the procedures need to take their course,' she said.

Thaci meanwhile came under additional pressure over a report by the a Council of Europe rapporteur, Dick Marty, who accused him of heading a network of organized crime responsible for smuggling heroin, weapons and even killing Serbs for illegal organs trade.

The accusations will likely hamper Thaci's plan to build the government coalition with representatives of the Serb minority, who have 10 out of the 120 seats in parliament reserved for them.

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