DESIGNER

Saskia Braucher

PROFILE/DESCRIPTION

Article Text courtesy of Economist.com OVERNIGHT snow has blanketed Pristina, muffling the noise of the hurly-burly of daily life in Kosovo’s capital. Now everyone is waiting to see if the response to allegations of fraud in Kosovo’s elections, held yesterday, will also be quietened, or whether this morning’s calm is merely the precursor to the storm. One senior diplomat says he witnessed “industrial-scale” fraud in the central region of Skenderaj; another says that in the same area the words “vote count” should be substituted by “vote cook”. The election was the first to be held since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008. No official results have yet been declared. At a press conference this morning Democracy in Action, an NGO monitoring polling stations, gave some preliminary results from just over half of Kosovo. Its figures put the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) of Hashim Thaci (pictured), the prime minister, first, with 30.69% of the vote. Mr Thaci’s former coalition partners, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), took 26.2%; Vetevendosje, a new party, was on 12.78%; and the party of Ramush Haradinaj, who is currently facing a retrial for war crimes in The Hague, was on 10.89%. Continued on Economist.com