A messy divorce
President of Kosovo Vjosa Osmani left her party LDK in 2021, to join a coalition with PM Kurti’s VV. Four years later, the love between them is all but lost and a messy divorce lies ahead.
Political coalitions can shift faster than contestants on Kosovo’s hugely popular version of VIP Big Brother, in the unpredictable landscape of Kosovar politics.
Just a few seasons ago, President Vjosa Osmani and Prime Minister Albin Kurti seemed to be the the ultimate power couple. After Osmani broke acrimoniously with her previous party LDK, whom she accused of “betraying the ideals of Ibrahim Rugova” — the first ever President of Kosovo and the founder of center-right LDK, she founded a party of her own, named “Guxo” (“Be brave”) together with few other unhappy members of LDK. She subsequently joined the coalition with the far bigger Vetevendosje, the perennial leftist ‘bad boys’ of Kosovo politics.
This political couple was hugely successful in TV ratings — and raking votes. In 2021, Osmani and Kurti jointly won 51% of the electoral vote, an unprecedented victory based on a tsunami of popular support from voters tired with the establishment parties. Osmani became a President (second consecutive woman president in Kosovo after non-partisan Atifete Jahjaga) and Kurti to become a Prime minister (for the second time in a short period, as his first mandate was cut short due to LDK leaving a previous coalition, after Kurti’s dramatic row with the Trump administration).
Indeed, Kurti-Osmani couple seemed to have more chemistry than a reality TV duo vying for a joint spin-off. In the dialogue with Serbia and relations with the rest of the world, there was no “good cop — bad cop scenario” agreed between Osmani and Kurti — they were both insistent on a popular and populist hard line approach vis-a-vis Serbian president Vucic (who actually merits all hard lines), and more contraversially, they also played tough with all the international allies of Kosovo, who were insistive on compromise (and sometimes compromised) solutions in the difficult dialogue with Serbia.
Both Osmani and Kurti also shared an intensely vicious and vehement attitude towards the Ancien Régime — all the other parties of the mainstream who governed Kosovo before and after the independence in a series of musical chair coalitions. The worldview of Osmani-Kurti, backed by a clear mandate, was categorical on a clear dichotomy between heroes and villains, seeing voters and their elected representatives, as either inherently good (anyone supporting Osmani or Kurti) or irredeemably evil (everyone else).
But as with any good reality show, drama is now just around the corner.
The political housemates have now turned into bitter frenemies, with the President channeling the spirit of dramatic diary room confessions by pointing fingers and hurling accusations at the Prime Minister. Prime minister is behaving like a Balkan man scorned by a former lover — pretending he doesn’t care and smug that he torched another partner who thought she’s better than him. The man, now fifty years old, is as determined and self-sufficient now, as he was in his rabble-rousing days as a Jacobine opposition leader. He even named his own party “Self-determination”.
There were whispers of troubles at home of course.
Western diplomats were surprised by the criticism (and delighted by the gossipy nature of such criticism) behind closed doors of the President, towards her political partner for much of this year. Two key co-founders of Osmani’s party, the Foreign minister Donika Gervalla — Shwartz and Agriculture minister Faton Peci slowly distanced themselves from the President by putting all their eggs on Kurti’s basket. But for most part, Osmani toed Kurti’s line, and in some cases even competed with him in endless tirades against the decimated opposition, independent media, various European envoys and Serbia, thus their tingling tensions remained in the domain of rumor mill by pundits and diplomats, not spilling over to the wider public.
But now beans have been spilled and the conflict between President and Prime minister erupted under the media spotlight, transforming private disputes into public spectacles that captivate audiences.
President of Kosovo gave a stinging rebuke of Kurti’s behavior with the Western allies: “No nation has succeeded on its own, and no state has achieved success in isolation. The importance and strengthening of alliances are invaluable. Weakening alliances is a strategic mistake. The alliance with those who helped us have a state is neither submission nor blackmail. I believe that our greatest strength lies in partnerships. Alliances are here to protect us, therefore putting them at risk and gambling with them undermines the self-defense of our Republic. I have never understood the mockery directed at our allies, nor the attacks against them, nor the misuse of their names to gain power.” [From the annual address to the nation. Bold letters by the author.]
Needless to say, President didn’t shake hands with the Prime minister after her annual address at the Kuvend, just as she refused to shake hands with her former close ally, the foreign minister in a public event few weeks ago.
Deluge of dissent didn’t stop here. President Osmani for the first time ever in her mandate, refused to sign two laws promulgated by the Kurti government with an accusatory note that the Law on the Security Council “jeopardizes national security and is in contradiction with the Constitution.”
Furthermore, Osmani in the nigh hours of this government’s and her own mandate, started promoting the idea the Kosovo should “unilaterally” implement Brussels and Ohrid agreements, with strong guarantees from the allies. This is quite a break from the current stance of Kurti who insists on signing ceremony for the agreement with Serbia before implementation, despite having formally accepted an unsigned obligation to implement these agreements couple of years ago, including the creation of an Association of Serbian Majority Municipalities.
VV has so far not reciprocated the new harsh tone of Osmani’s criticism. Speaker of the Parliament, a close ally of PM Kurti has stated that: “President has not found the most appropriate words to make a critique of the government. I believe there are other ways to express this. Disagreements have always existed, and they are evident, especially on topics such as dialogue, the association of municipalities… I believe there is a great opportunity for critiques and disagreements to be expressed in different ways and not to use words that are damaging to one another.”
Where does this leave the President, the Prime minister and the country that they have ruled jointly since 2021?
Pundits are speculating that the President is preparing the ground to either have her mandate extended (a very tall order, considering hostility she has shown to the opposition during her highly partisan presidency) or rejoin LDK after her mandate ends. It’s not a far-fetched scenario as the Osmani is currently the most isolated figure in the national politics, having lost the party she has founded. Guxo has now all but fully melted into VV, under the co-leadership of foreign and agriculture ministers, former allies of Osmani. She’s only 42 years old and her vast political ambition will likely not be limited to the great philanthropic work done by the previous President Jahjaga. LDK is certainly counting that some of Osmani’s voters will return to their fold, having abandoned the party in droves in 2021 elections.
Kurti will also survive the crisis. He has shown to be made of teflon, when it comes to surviving splits in his immediate orbit. Former president of VV Visar Ymeri, former VV Mayor of Prishtina Shpend Ahmeti, former VV Deputy Prime minister Haki Abazi, the Islamist wing of VV MPs, have all left Kurti in recent months and years, but Kurti outlived them all.
Maybe Kurti’s end of the tenure can be more likened to a gripping episode of the reality TV show “Traitors”. Those he perceives as traitors — factions and leaders seeking to undermine his authority and diverging from his fundamentalist political vision — have attempted to first change him and then oppose his rule inside VV. However, Kurti’s tactical maneuvering have enabled him to outsmart his rivals, consolidating support among ever-smaller group of steadfast allies and appealing to his core electorate. Few, if any, gamblers would bet on Osmani outwitting Kurti in this game.
But the wider electorate is more concerned with economic failures of Kurti’s governance, and they may have just lost patience and interest for the reality-show shenanigans of the Osmani-Kurti tandem.
After all, in all political reality shows, it’s all about getting the votes, not the critiques.
(There are some recent events and a terrorist attack on Kosovo critical infrastructure and the way how Kosovo government responded to these, that merit an article, but I had already written this one, so I will cover other urgent event in my next post)
