Kosovo’s snap parliamentary elections on June 11, 2017, have offered the country an opportunity to move past recent political impasses and reorient political institutions to the pressing needs of its citizens. Continuing a pattern of extraordinary elections, these elections were precipitated by a long-running political crisis set off by the previous parliamentary election, in June 2014. A six-month deadlock over forming the new government led to opposition protests in parliament, some of which turned violent.
Minority Legislative Representation
On February 14, 2021, Kosovo’s voters went to the polls for the fifth parliamentary election in 13 years since independence in 2008 and the second such election in the past two years. The vote elected the Assembly’s 120 members, who then voted for the President and Prime Minister. In these elections, LVV won an historic 50.3 percent of the vote, the first time one party received a majority, ushering in Albin Kurti as prime minister and leading to the election of Vjosa Osmani as president. The majority may offer Kosovo its first full-term parliament since independence.
The December local elections in Slovakia resulted in a significant increase both in the number of municipalities in which Roma ran as candidates and the number of Roma candidates elected to local office. This increase is in large part due to direct candidate training and recruitment by NDI and its program graduates, as well as the increased attention paid to the need for Roma political participation.