Kosovo’s Deadlock Broken, But Democracy Still at Risk

Kosovo’s parliament broke months of deadlock electing Dimal Basha as speaker, but opposition sabotage aligned with Belgrade threatens sovereignty, justice, & the republic’s fragile democratic future.

PRISHTINA — After months of paralysis, Kosovo’s parliament has finally elected a speaker. Dimal Basha, a firebrand deputy of the ruling Vetëvendosje movement, secured 73 votes, breaking a deadlock that had left the country without a functioning legislature since February¹.

On the surface, this should mark the end of Kosovo’s most corrosive institutional crisis in years. For nearly seven months, the Assembly failed 57 times to elect a Speaker, paralysing government formation and locking more than €700 million in international funds. Yet while the vote for Basha unblocked the machinery of state, it did not resolve the deeper fault lines threatening Kosovo’s democratic future.

Because beneath the noise of partisan feuding lies a darker reality: Kosovo’s opposition parties, particularly the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK), have aligned themselves, in rhetoric and strategy, with Belgrade’s Serbian List. A…