Kosovo’s parliament elected former rebel leader Hashim Thaci to a second term as prime minister on Tuesday and chose businessman Behgjet Pacolli as the country’s new president.
Hashim Thaci was voted in 65-1 to head a coalition government facing growing social tensions and a new round of talks with Serbia aimed at resolving a score of disputes. He also faces an investigation into allegations that members of the now-disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army once sold the organs of their civilian captives.
MULTIMILLIONAIRE
Pacolli, a self-declared multimillionaire who owns a Swiss-based construction company, received 62 votes, with 4 against. Pacolli, the country’s second president since Kosovo seceded from Serbia in 2008, was elected on the third attempt, after failing to secure at least 80 votes in the first two rounds of voting as required by law.
Just 67 of 120 lawmakers were present as most of the opposition had walked out in protest over his nomination.
Pacolli was suspected of bribing Russian officials in 1999 to win a deal to renovate the Kremlin, and also of smuggling hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash into Russia — but the allegations against him did not reach trial stage. Russia backs Serbia’s claim to Kosovo and Pacolli has often been demonized in the Kosovo press for his links to Russian businesses.
The walkout also highlighted the political rivalries that have troubled Kosovo politics for decades — differences bottled up ahead of the 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia.
TARNISHED
Since then, Kosovo’s leadership has been tarnished by a series of corruption scandals, including an EU-led investigation into alleged embezzlement of public funds by Kosovo Transport Minster Fatmir Limaj.
Limaj said he would not be part of the new Cabinet after International officials requested that officials being investigated be left out of the new government.
Thaci’s party won the most votes in Kosovo’s Dec. 12 election that was marred by electoral fraud and a series of voting irregularities before results were finally certified by election authorities. He was forced to form a coalition with minority parties to rule, including that of key ally, Pacolli.
Kosovo’s independence has been recognized by 75 countries, but Serbia has pledged to revert the secession.
Australian scientists have raised questions over the efficacy of the AstraZeneca and University of Oxford COVID-19 vaccine in establishing herd immunity, calling for a pause on its widespread rollout as the country recorded one new case of the virus yesterday. Opposition to the vaccine casts a cloud over Australia’s immunization plans, with 53 million doses of the AstraZeneca jab already on hand. “The question is really whether it is able to provide herd immunity. We are playing a long game here. We don’t know how long that will take,” Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology president Stephen Turner said. Turner added
A racing pigeon has survived an extraordinary 13,000km Pacific Ocean crossing from the US to find a new home in Australia. Now authorities consider the bird a quarantine risk and plan to kill it. Kevin Celli-Bird yesterday said he discovered that the exhausted bird that arrived in his Melbourne backyard on Dec. 26 last year had disappeared from a race in the US state of Oregon on Oct. 29. Experts suspect the pigeon that Celli-Bird has named Joe — after US president-elect Joe Biden — hitched a ride on a cargo ship to cross the Pacific. Joe’s feat has attracted the attention
China has possibly committed “genocide” in its treatment of Uighurs and other minority Muslims in its western region of Xinjiang, the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China said in a report on Thursday. The bipartisan commission said that new evidence had last year emerged that “crimes against humanity — and possibly genocide — are occurring” in Xinjiang. It also accused China of harassing Uighurs in the US. China has been widely condemned for setting up complexes in Xinjiang that it describes as “vocational training centers” to stamp out extremism and give people new skills, which others have called concentration camps. The UN says that
The Polish Supreme Court on Friday quashed a lower court’s green light for the extradition of a businessman to China for alleged fraud, a charge he has denied, saying that he is being targeted for supporting Falun Gong. Polish authorities took Chinese-born Swedish citizen Li Zhihui, now 53, into custody in 2019 on an international warrant issued by China for alleged non-payment in a business deal, Krzysztof Kitajgrodzki, his Polish lawyer, told reporters. Following the Supreme Court ruling, the case would return to a lower appellate court for review. Kitajgrodzki told reporters that it was still not a given that his client
RSS