The Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo determines clear the procedures and deadlines for the constitution of the Assembly of Kosovo, though not those for formation of the government.

This has caused Kosovo to engage in successive political and institutional stalemates after each elections held in recent years. Therefore, those who’re always taking credit for allegedly drafting the Kosovo Constitution – or the so-called “Fathers of the Constitution” – cannot boast now, as we face crisis in forming the new government partly because of the constitution.

However, there is common finding of all constitutionalists that there’s a constitutional vacuum over the procedures and time-frames determining actions concerning creation of the new government, following parliamentary elections. According to them, there is no other way to address this constitutional vacuum than to address it to the Constitutional Court.

The main burden for addressing this issue to the Constitutional Court, at this stage of formation of new institutions, thus remains to President Thaçi, who is the guarantor for democratic functioning of the institutions.

Sources close to the Presidency confirm that the Office of the President has already started preparing the material, namely adequate questions to be addressed by the Constitutional Court for this matter. This has been confirmed for Index Online by a senior presidency official on condition of anonymity. According to him, there are two crucial issues or questions that need to be addressed to the Constitutional Court.

“The first has to do with the time-frame available to the winning party or coalition for proposing a candidate for prime minister to the President of the Republic of Kosovo. Following the constitution of the Assembly of Kosovo, the Constitutional Court should set a fixed and reasonable time-frame within which the winning party or coalition should be obliged to nominate its own candidate for prime minister. On the other hand, the second issue is dealing with dilemma: what happens when the party or coalition that wins the parliamentary elections refuses to propose to the President of the Republic of Kosovo its candidate for prime minister?” the Presidency official explained.

Otherwise, President Thaci is expected to address these dilemmas to the Constitutional Court by the end of this week, in order to get interpretation and clarification on both these issues.