Eight Albanian parties unite for the elections in Serbia, Shaip Kamberi leads the “Albanian Coalition”

Representatives of Albanian parties from Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac in southern Serbia reached agreement, in the presence of Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti, to take part together in Serbia’s early parliamentary elections on October 25.

Eight parties that have municipal councillors in these three Albanian-majority municipalities in southern Serbia will take part in the joint list, called the “Albanian Coalition”.

“It is time for us to have greater political power, since in reality we have it, to be represented with a larger number of deputies in the Assembly, so that we can try to solve our problems,” Shaip Kamberi, leader of the Party for Democratic Action, told Radio Free Europe.

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti said Albanians in Serbia should have “at least 5 guaranteed seats” in Serbia’s Assembly.

Kamberi was the sole representative of the Albanian community in the previous legislature of Serbia’s Assembly.

Which parties signed the agreement?

The agreement in Kosovo’s capital Pristina was signed by Shaip Kamberi’s Party for Democratic Action, Visar Memeti’s Alternative for Change, Nagip Arifi’s Democratic Party, Agim Sabedini’s Albanian Democratic Party, Shqiprim Musliu’s Movement for Democratic Progress, Sami Salihu’s Movement for Reforms, Armend Aliu’s Alternative for the Valley and Naser Aziri’s Democratic Union of Albanians.

These parties are signatories to the agreement, according to the document that Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti published on Facebook.

Asked what the basis of their participation will be, Kamberi said it will be respect for the agreements signed between representatives of Albanians and the Government of Serbia.

“We have agreed that the basis of our demands will be the seven-point plan, which the Government of Serbia approved in June 2013, referring to earlier agreements which, with OSCE mediation, were signed between representatives of Albanians and the Government of Serbia,” he said.

The seven-point plan envisages the representation of Albanians in state institutions, the economic recovery of the municipalities of the Preševo Valley, and the official use of the Albanian language, script and national symbols.

It also envisages decentralisation in the justice system, security and confidence-building measures, as well as issues related to education, media, culture, health and social protection.

The “Albanian Coalition” list will be led by Shaip Kamberi. The second bearer will be from the Alternative for Change, and the third from the Democratic Party.

According to Kamberi, agreement has also been reached on joint action after the elections.

“The deputies will stay together and will try, with some other parties with which joint action connects us, to form a parliamentary group,” he added.

What did Kurti say?

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti assessed at the Kosovo Government meeting on September 30 that joint participation in the “Albanian Coalition” list could be an important and historic step for Albanians of the Preševo Valley in the fight “against discrimination and exclusion, as well as against administrative ethnic cleansing [in Serbia]”.

Kurti repeated the position that members of the Albanian community in Serbia should have the same rights as members of the Serb community in Kosovo, including reserved seats for minorities in the Assembly.

“Serbs in Kosovo are guaranteed 10 of the 120 deputy seats in Kosovo’s Assembly, while according to this approach, Albanians from Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac should have at least five guaranteed seats in Serbia’s Assembly, which has 250 deputy seats,” Kurti said.

Kurti, in a Facebook post, said Kosovo will support Albanians from Preševo, Bujanovac and Medveđa in “realising their rights and preserving their identity”.

Asked about Kurti’s assessment regarding guaranteed seats in the Assembly, Kamberi said political representatives of Albanians in Serbia fight for one, at most two mandates, and in some cases even three, and that he considers this to be “very far from how many Albanians there are in Serbia”.

Janjić: A good political step

Dušan Janjić from the Forum for Ethnic Relations in Belgrade told Radio Free Europe that reaching a political agreement between Albanian political entities in Serbia is “a good political step”, as they will secure the maximum number of votes.

He assesses that the “authority” of Kosovo Prime Minister Kurti has likely contributed to reaching the agreement.

Janjić also stresses that, if after the October elections the result between Aleksandar Vučić’s “United Serbia” list and the student list “Students Win” is close, the Albanian minority has secured greater power in deciding whom it will support.

According to his assessment, the parties that until now have cooperated with the authorities in Serbia have borne the “greatest burden” of this agreement.

On the other hand, Janjić considers that Albanians in Serbia cannot have reserved seats in the Assembly, as Kosovo Prime Minister Kurti requests, based on the reserved seats in Kosovo’s Assembly for the Serb community.

He recalls that Albanians in Serbia have the National Council.

“With the determination of guaranteed seats based on the number of residents, Albanians would not get more than three. The model of guaranteed seats is given to small communities, such as Poles, Slovaks and Croats, and is given on the basis of interstate agreements,” Janjić said.

Janjić also said that the Albanian minority communicates with Kosovo, as it considers it its mother state, while the authorities in Serbia, according to him, consider Albania to be their mother state.

This is not the first time someone from Kosovo or Albania has mediated in reaching an agreement between Albanian parties from southern Serbia.

Thus, political representatives from the three municipalities in southern Serbia signed in 2020, in Tirana, an agreement for joint participation in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

That agreement was signed in the presence of Albania’s then acting Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Gent Cakaj.