Kosovo lawmakers break 8-month deadlock with election of an ethnic Serb to the leadership team

PRISTINA, Kosovo — Kosovo’s Parliament on Friday ended an eight-month political deadlock by electing its full leadership, including a representative from the ethnic Serb minority, clearing the path for the formation of a new government.

Although the Parliament elected the rest of its top team in August, including a speaker from the the left-wing Self-Determination Movement (Vetevendosje!), it had failed to elect one representative from the ethnic Serb minority, as the constitution requires.

In Friday’s vote Nenad Rasic, from a small ethnic Serb party named For Freedom, Justice and Survival, was elected as deputy speaker with 71 votes in favor. All nine lawmakers from the main Serb party, Srpska Lista, voted against and 24 members from two smaller right-wing ethnic Albanian parties abstai