Albanians from Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja No Longer Represented in Serbian Parliament

Presevo (Wikimedia/Planeti)

The Albanians living in the south of Serbia will not be represented in the Parliament of Serbia after national polls on April 3, the National Electoral Commission reported on April 6.

The ethnic group previously had three seats in the Parliament, the Regional Information Agency JUGpress released on April 6. The owner of the TV Spektri of Bujanovac, Nexhat Behluli, said that “the Albanians in the south of Serbia didn’t vote in the parliamentary polls for two reasons,” recalling that they had presented two separate lists of candidates.

“Even though they were aware that they would hardly meet the threshold requirement, the Albanian politicians cared more about the sequence of names on the list of candidates than about the interests of citizens, which is why the voters have punished them,” Bexluli said for JUGpress. He went on to say that “those same people who were running for Parliament had urged voters to boycott the presidential elections, to prove, allegedly, that they were refusing to accept the Serbian state as their own.”

According to the Commission, based on 98.73 percent of processed polling places, the “Coalition of the Albanians of the Valley” won 0.26 percent of the vote and failed to reach the threshold. Another ethnic Albanian coalition, “The Alternative for Change – Albanian Democratic Alternative” won 0.09 percent of the vote, remaining below the electoral threshold as well. The parties included in the list are bringing together ethnic Albanians in Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja.