What will the elections in Kosovo be like with Vjosa as Albin's rival, not partner?

Will Vjosa Osmani end Albin Kurti's dominance in Kosovo's political scene? This is the first question that arises after the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) formalized its coalition with the former president for the June 7 snap parliamentary elections. 

A day earlier, LDK leader Lumir Abdixhiku confirmed that LDK has supported his proposal for Osmani to be the head of the electoral list and the presidential candidate. Abdixhiku himself will be a candidate for prime minister.

Abdixhiku said that the decision was made unanimously in the LDK General Council, adding that the party's electoral list will also include 19 other names proposed by Osmani, including Jeta Statovci, former Guxo MP and among the most voted on the LVV list in the last elections, as well as Albena Reshitaj, former Minister of Environment and Spatial Planning.

The dilemma about the weight that Vjosa Osmani's re-election in the electoral race may have is not only related to her function as former head of state, nor to the sense of injustice that seemed to be done to her, after Albin Kurti cut her off from the possibility of re-election without any public explanation. But above all, to the fact that the last two times she has competed in elections, she has had a great electoral weight.

Before returning to his old home, Osmani had been one of the most voted figures in the LDK.

In the 2019 elections, she topped the LDK list, receiving a full 176,000 personal votes. But when the elephants of her party turned their backs on the electorate and plotted to overthrow the first Kurti government, she came out against these backdrops, breaking with the backstage of Isa Mustafa and Avdullah Hoti. In the 2021 elections, Osmani ran in coalition with Albin Kurti and the Vetëvendosje Movement, (later forming her own political entity, Lista Guxo) where she received over 300,000 personal votes.

After winning the elections, as a result of this electoral weight, she was elected president of Kosovo and consequently did not compete in the last two challenges, neither in the February nor December 2025 elections. But today, when Vjosa Osmani is returning to the field, the dilemma arises: how many of the votes she transferred in 2021 from LDK to VV will move in the other direction with her?

This dilemma is made even stronger by the formula she has chosen to aim for this June 7. Osmani intends to repeat with Abdixhiku, the same binomial she created with Kurti five years ago: one as a candidate for prime minister and the other for president.

"I have proposed a joint competition for president and prime minister. I have proposed that the LDK compete with Vjosa Osmani as a candidate for president of the Republic, and at the same time the bearer of our electoral list, and with me, the president of the LDK, as a candidate for prime minister," Abdixhiku said before his party's forums.

It is precisely this similarity and this overlap that have raised questions about the outcome of the election race in Kosovo a month from now.

The incumbent Prime Minister, Kurti, is aiming for a new mandate after the LVV's victory in two elections in 2025, first in February and then in the extraordinary ones in December.

Last time, his party received over 51 percent of the vote and Kurti again emerged as the most voted politician.

During a recent speech, Kurti said that, in the June 7 elections, he aims to win 60 percent of the vote, to avoid future crises and continued opposition blockages.

But will this be possible with Vjosa Osmani facing him and no longer alongside him? The whole puzzle lies in that gap between 170 thousand and 300 thousand personal votes that the former president received in the years 2019 - 2021. If Osmani manages to remain in those quotas, this would mark the end of Vetëvendosje's reign over Kosovo./lapsi