Kosovo's election: Calm now, a storm to come?

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%.

According to the Central Electoral Commission, 47.8% of the 1.6m people eligible to vote did so. That figure is deceptive, however, as a large but unknown percentage of those registered to vote live and work abroad. So the fact that in most constituencies inhabited by ethnic Albanians the turnout ranged roughly from 37%-55% is credible. But turnout in Skenderaj and Gllogovc were reported as 93.68% and 86.94% respectively. These areas are heartlands of support for the PDK.

One diplomat acting as an election observer in Skenderaj yesterday said that the cheating was so blatant that no attempt had been made to cover it up. Another said that in one district with 940 registered voters, another 300 had apparently "voted".

As for Kosovo's minority Serb areas, turnout figures were high for the southern and central enclaves of the country, but almost non-existent in the northern region which abuts Serbia.

Oliver Ivanovic, a senior Serbian government official with responsibility for Kosovo, said that the Serbs of the south were drifting away from Belgrade and hence making a "terrible mistake". Posters in Serb-inhabited north Mitrovica exhorted people not to vote for the "fake state" of Kosovo.

It is too early to tell what all this means. But if the other parties believe Mr Thaci secured his lead only through ballot-stuffing, that will make the task of forming any coalition very difficult.

Last night Mr Thaci claimed victory, saying that the elections were "a referendum on the European future of Kosovo." That may be, but Kosovo is becoming left behind in the Balkan race for European integration. This week Montenegro will gain official candidate status for the EU, and Bosnians and Albanians will win visa-free travel to Europe's 25-member Schengen zone. Kosovars are now the only people left in this part of Europe who now still need visas for the Schengen area.

The next few days will tell whether this morning's calm in Pristina will last or whether, as one diplomatic source puts it, "we can get the system to address the problems rather than relying on a ‘crisis' to solve them, which has been the pattern here for too long."