Kosovo's elections judged a success

As the year comes to an end, Kosovo will soon have three newly-elected institutions in place.

On 17 November, three different elections were held in Kosovo: elections for the Kosovo Assembly (part of the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government, or PISG); for municipal assemblies, and for mayors. On 8 December there was also a second round of voting in the mayoral elections in 23 municipalities.

The joint efforts of the Central Election Commission Secretariat (CECS) and the OSCE Mission in Kosovo in organising these elections resulted in a smooth and technically successful election process.

The day after the vote, the Council of Europe's Election Observation Mission noted in a statement that all three elections were "generally in line with Council of Europe principles, as well as international and European standards for democratic elections".

OSCE expertise at work

"To handle four elections with just over three months' preparation time is an extremely challenging task," said Hugh Fulton, Director of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo's Election Department.

"On a daily basis, the chance of failure was much greater than that of success and it was only due to the determination of the local election staff and their OSCE counterparts that success was achieved," he added.

The main responsibility for organising the elections lay with the Central Election Commission Secretariat, having taken over this task from the OSCE Mission.

Fulton pointed out that, given the complexity and sheer number of elections in such a short timeframe, the main area where the OSCE's expertise was needed was with planning. "At the field level, the ability of the CEC Secretariat to implement plans and manage the logistical operation was very good," he said.

He also acknowledged the contribution of the OSCE local staff in this year's election process. "The support from our local staff members was extremely professional and of great value. In other words, we have people from Kosovo dealing with issues concerning the people of Kosovo - there is local capacity which is building further capacity," he said.

Role of the media

The media in Kosovo reported not just on the election process, but also about a number of irregularities that were detected.

A probe by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN, a regional media development organization that also produces news and programmes) revealed several irregularities in some polling stations.

"BIRN got hold of video footage showing, for example, how committee members were assigning votes of people who never turned up at the polling station to one particular party," said BIRN's Kosovo Director, Jeta Xharra.

"Although this incident did not to a great extent affect the final results of the elections, the future electoral polling commissions and the NGOs monitoring elections need to be much better prepared for the next election," Xharra noted.

Irregularities dealt with

The proactive attitude of the media and the voters themselves brought attempts to commit fraud to light and all cases that were detected were dealt with.

"The internal and external auditing mechanisms of the Count and Results Centre and the Election Complaints and Appeals Commission were up to their task and, for example, cancelled the polling stations where there were irregularities," said CEC spokesperson, Arianit Osmani.

The turnout in the election for the Kosovo Assembly was 40.1 per cent. Despite the difficult political situation for internally displaced persons, a flexible vote-by-mail programme gained some 50 per cent more valid postal votes than in the previous election.