Kosovo opposition party won historic half of vote: final results

PRISTINA: Kosovo's anti-establishment Vetevendosje party took home a record-breaking half of ballots cast in last month's election, final results showed Thursday, though the party still needs allies for a ruling majority.

The party's landslide election win on February 14 revealed a huge appetite for change among voters who abandoned two traditional parties that have governed Kosovo for the past two decades.

According to the final tally announced by the Central Election Commission, Vetevendosje, whose name means Self-Determination, won 49.952 percent of the snap poll.

That hands the party, which campaigned against the old guard with calls for "jobs and justice", 58 out of 120 seats in parliament.

Yet the party says it has already secured support from five MPs from ethnic Turkish, Bosniak and Roma minority parties, which enjoy a total of 10 reserved seats.

Vetevendosje's victory was the largest enjoyed by an single party in Kosovo's democratic history.

The record had previously been held by the outgoing Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), which won over 45 percent of the electorate in 2001.

This year the party plunged down to 13 percent of the vote, behind another establishment party with 17 percent, the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) led by former rebels from Kosovo's 1990s war with Serbia.

Led by the provocative former student protest leader Albin Kurti, Vetevendosje will inherit huge challenges as it tries to revive Kosovo's poor economy, create new jobs, fight the pandemic and root out corruption.

Kurti has said that EU-led talks on normalising ties with former war foe Serbia are not at the top of his agenda.

The former province declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a decade after the 1998-1999 war between independence-seeking ethnic Albanian guerillas and Serb armed forces.

While most Western powers recognise Kosovo's statehood, Serbia and its leading international allies Russia and China do not.

The frozen conflict is a source of major tension between the Balkan neigbours and an obstacle for either side to move forward with dreams of joining the EU.