Albanian Presevo Valley Coalition submitted late Wednesday their list of candidates for the May 6 parliamentary elections to the Republic Electoral Commission (RIK), with 10,355 signatures of support.
The coalition brings together four ethnic Albanian parties from Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja (municipalities in southern Serbia), and the list is headed by Riza Halimi, the leader of the Party for Democratic Action.
President of the coalition’s election headquarters Sadiku Nadir told the press at the Serbian parliament building that Halimi has the strong support of citizens for everything he has done in the past four years.
The coalition comprises the Party for Democratic Action, the Movement for Democratic Progress whose leader Jonuz Musliu is the second on the list, the Democratic Union of Albanians headed by Rahmi Zulfiu and the Democratic Union of the Valley, led by Skender Destani.
The deadline for submission of lists for parliamentary elections expires at midnight on April 20, and the RIK has approved 13 lists thus far.
Albanian flags were put up on many of the houses in the village of Konculj, southern Serbia, inhabited solely by ethnic Albanians.
This action was organized by the youth of the Movement for Democratic Progress (PDP).
PDP leader Jonuz Musliu, who is also the president of the Bujanovac municipal assembly, told Tanjug he had known nothing about the intentions of his party’s younger members.
“This morning I saw the village of Konculj decorated with more than 100 Albanian flags. The young members informed me that all the villagers were expressing their support for my party this way,” Musliu stated Konculj is a traditional supporter of the PDP, which came out as the second strongest ethnic Albanian party in Bujanovac after the local elections four years ago, winning 14 percent of the vote, or 6 seats in the municipal assembly.
The PDP will run in the parliamentary election too, where it will be part of the Coalition of Presevo Valley Albanians, along with three other ethnic Albanian parties.
Konculj is located 10 km away from Bujanovac. The checkpoint towards Kosovo that bears the village’s name is situated there as well.
According to the 2002 census, which is the most recent data because the local Albanians boycotted the 2011 census, 1,306 people live in Konculj in 186 families.
