Former Kosovo PM Haradinaj Eying President’s Seat

As the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AKK) has proposed its leader Ramush Haradinaj to be Kosovo’s next president there have been reactions within the party ranks.
In a press release, the AAK steering council said on Wednesday it had “authorized party leader Haradinaj to hold any talks on behalf of the Alliance on the eventual reconfiguration of the government, including the issue of the president if this is on the agenda.”
Both these proposals – government reshuffle and presidential candidacy – come after AAK’s repeated criticism against the coalition government headed by Avdullah Hoti over the dialogue with Serbia, and following war crime indictments against President Hashim Thaci and opposition PDK leader Kadri Veseli.
“I consider the trust to be the candidate for president, if this is discussed … a high responsibility and special honour,” Haradinaj, a former prime minister, said in a FB post.
The deputy head of AAK, Ardian Gjini said the indictment filed by the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office in The Hague against current President Hashim Thaci for war crimes allegedly committed during the independence war of the 1990s was one reason for the need to discuss a new president.
Thaci has already said he will resign if the indictment is confirmed. His current mandate ends in April 2021 in any case.
But Gjini added that the issue of the presidency needed to be discussed soon whether the indictment against Thaci is confirmed or not.
As no other party in the governing coalition has asked for a reshuffle, it seems like Haradinaj is pushing to include negotiations for the election of the next president in eventual talks giving the issue a dominant place on Kosovo’s confictual political scene. /argumentum.al