Kosovo Albanians Jam Polls in 1st Free Election

Kosovo Albanian voters lined up into the chilly night Saturday to cast ballots in municipal elections that were more about independence than potholes and garbage collection.

But most of Kosovo’s Serbian minority refused to vote in the province’s first postwar election, to protest a U.N. administration and a NATO-led peacekeeping force that many Serbs accuse of violating guarantees of Yugoslav sovereignty over the territory.

Against the almost total Serbian boycott, an ethnic Albanian turnout that kept polls open several hours past their announced closing time showed once again how deeply divided Kosovo remains.

Official results from the balloting are not expected for several days, but Kosovo’s chief United Nations administrator, Bernard Kouchner, described the turnout as massive and said the vote was violence-free. North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led peacekeepers called Saturday the calmest day since they arrived 16 months ago, he added.

To critics who said it was impossible to build a democratic Kosovo so soon after a ruthless civil war, Kouchner responded: “Today they were proved wrong. The people of Kosovo have taken up their responsibility for building their own society in freedom.”

But as is often the case here, one success can open a whole new set of problems. Kouchner is now under more pressure to hold general elections in Kosovo, which probably would bring the debate over the province’s independence to a head.

Kosovo is still officially a province of Serbia, the dominant of Yugoslavia’s two republics. The new Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, has vowed to maintain sovereignty over Kosovo, while the ethnic Albanian majority is more determined than ever to break away.

Poll organizers went to great pains trying to convince voters that they should concentrate on such issues as health care, education and social services as they decide whom to vote for in the elections.

Kouchner, who rules by decree, issued a regulation defining 15 areas of responsibility for municipal leaders, including water, electricity, roads and garbage collection, each of which his administration still does not provide regularly in most of Kosovo.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which organized the elections, then consulted ordinary people and found that health care, education and economic development were their top three concerns on Kouchner’s list of acceptable municipal matters.

But ethnic Albanian voters interviewed at polling places Saturday said the first thing on their minds as they waited to cast ballots was independence for Kosovo.

Ahmet Tmava, 38, arrived at a polling center in the ethnically divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica at 7 a.m. He was still waiting more than five hours later to vote for the Democratic Party of Kosovo. It is led by Hashim Thaci, former commander of the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, which fought Serbian forces in a 15-month war for independence.

Thaci was not a candidate Saturday, but Tmava, a former guerrilla fighter, said later through a translator that he voted for Thaci’s party because, “if independence becomes an obstacle, then we will put uniforms on again.”

“We took the uniforms off because guarantees were given. If they are not realized, then there is no other alternative but to put those uniforms back on,” he added.

At another polling station here, ethnic Albanian Suada Imeri, 41, said water and electricity were important issues, especially since she has power only one day a week and no running water in her village, Koder.

But after walking about three miles and standing in line for more than five hours, Imeri and her daughter Nadire, 18, said independence would be the best way to solve all of Kosovo’s many problems.

“Maybe the U.N. tries,” added their friend Miradie Doroci, 57. “But we see no improvements.”

About 900,000 mainly ethnic Albanian voters were registered to vote in the elections, which included 5,441 candidates from more than 20 parties. The parties will be assigned seats in 30 municipal assemblies according to their shares of the vote.

Public opinion polls suggested that the Democratic League of Kosovo, headed by French-educated intellectual Ibrahim Rugova, would win the most votes, followed by Thaci’s party. The Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, led by one of Thaci’s former lieutenants, Ramush Haradinaj, was ranked third in the opinion polls.

But the desire for a separate state is so strong among Kosovo Albanians that all but four of 22 registered parties listed the demand for independence as a key plank in their official platforms. Those whose platforms didn’t mention independence represent minorities such as ethnic Turks and Bosniaks, or Muslim Slavs--groups that, like Serbs, suffer ethnic Albanian attacks but that Kouchner said did not join the Serbs’ boycott.

In Serb-dominated northern Kosovska Mitrovica, pro-Kostunica leader Oliver Ivanovic said he would argue for a separate Serbian council to run that part of the city. It could cooperate with the ethnic Albanian south through joint committees, he suggested in an interview.

“These elections are not democratic, and they are not legal,” Ivanovic added. “A very large number of people are not participating, and they are not participating because they fear for their lives.”

Although ethnic violence has dropped off sharply, attacks against Serbs continue in Kosovo, and more than 210,000 Serbian and other minority refugees from the province still live in poorly maintained camps in Serbia proper.

On Oct. 19, two unidentified men grabbed Kosovo Serb farmer Zivorar Milojevic, 67, as he was herding his cows. They hanged him from a tree with the reins of his horse, 200 yards from his house in the village of Miroc, near Vucitrn, Ivanovic said.

About two weeks earlier, a Serbian man was killed when a land mine exploded under a farmer’s tractor near the town of Obilic, where several Serbs have been attacked in recent months despite protection from peacekeeping troops. A second victim died Friday, Ivanovic said.

Kouchner told reporters Saturday that he regretted that Serbs had boycotted the vote, but he insisted that ousted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic had forced them to stay away from the polls.

Kouchner promised to appoint Serbian representatives to municipal assemblies and to hold fresh elections in areas where Serbs form the majority.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch complained earlier this month--as Ivanovic did Saturday--that the elections were being held too soon, and it pointed to the slayings of several moderate ethnic Albanian politicians in the run-up to the vote as evidence of intimidation.