Trajković on Kosovo election boycott

BELGRADE

The Serb National Council of Kosovo (SNV) official Radmila Trajković has commented on the government’s stance regarding the announced local elections in Kosovo.

She said that “local self-government will have no responsibility toward Serbs” if Belgrade called for a boycott of the vote, scheduled for November.

“I do not expect the Serbian government or president to support the Serb participation in the local Kosovo elections in an explicit way. But I also do not think that participating in the elections, if there is decentralization, goes against the stance of the Serbian government,” she told Belgrade daily Politika. 

Trajković said that Belgrade is trying to fight for the return of sovereignty over Kosovo, but “the sovereignty will be worthless if there are no Serbs there”.

However, she said that the Kosovo Albanian government is “not fully prepared to enable decentralization for municipalities with majority Serb population”, adding that she will participate in the November 15 elections “if several conditions are met beforehand”.

“These are that we receive territories, and that we receive the already transferred authorities to a team of people who were appointed to be the ones to implement decentralization,” she said.

Trajković added that “it is not realistic to try and implement decentralization by September 15”, the deadline for registering election lists.