Talkingpolitics

  The Hope for Real Change in Kosovo Turned Out to Be an Illusion From:   Altin Gjeta   30-01-2020 at 19:03 Kosovo went into last October’s snap elections facing the same old problems—lingering poverty, massive youth unemployment, endemic corruption and state capture, and on top of everything facing Serbia’s never wavering de-recognition campaign of its independence, while the Pristina-Belgrade has come to a full stop. In an opinion piece just before elections, I argued that elections needed to bring real change and that people Kosovo should vote opposition parties which once in power should work to pull Kosovo’s statehood and democracy out of the edge. The election’s outcome, with the two main opposition parties, LVV and LDK, as the clear winners, was a blow to the old war guard which ruled the country for more than a decade since its independence. In a report for the  European Politics and Policy  at the London School of Economics, Blerim Vela asserted that “voters have clearly punis