One of the many viral memes the COVID-19 outbreak has produced highlights the fact that Shakespeare crafted King Lear while in quarantine for the Black Plague. Yesterday’s extraordinary session of the Assembly of Kosovo might, perhaps, be viewed as a contemporary nod to the great playwright. 

In a perfect Shakespearean manner, the tragedy unfolded over several acts, with many twists and turns. The climactic fall of Albin Kurti’s government amidst a global pandemic and the consecutive disruption across Europe and beyond, however, overshadows any Shakespearean drama, with the Kosovar audience left to live with potentially cataclysmic consequences. 

The citizens of Kosovo have experienced their fair share of political crises in recent years. The vile dissolution of a recently-formed, less than two months old government is, however, a novum. Since Vetëvendosje’s landslide election win in October, their promise to break with the corrupt and clientelist status quo has been met with fierce resistance from the ruling elites. 

Under circumstances like these, the coalition agreement between VV and the rivalling LDK came somewhat as a surprise in many ways, despite having been discussed for months. It seemed to some that the party of its late pacifist founder, Ibrahim Rugova, was departing from the clientelism and ideological vacuum of the past few years and may be ready to become a real force for change in a country rattled by high unemployment, emigration and cronyism. 

Yet, the LDK’s sudden willingness to torpedo the very same agreement they promised to fulfil in February is not surprising. If their desire to be instrumentalized in a dirty game of personal interests is not proof enough, the many confusing and underwhelming speeches their MPs (save for Vjosa Osmani) delivered during yesterday’s marathon session are a perfect representation of the current state of this party. 

Nevertheless, despite their detrimental role in this unprecedented act of political sabotage, the LDK cannot be solely blamed. 

Rather, in an act of divine intervention, President Hashim Thaçi, a fierce opponent of Kurti, played his trump card, quite literally. Ever since VV’s electoral landslide, it was expected that Thaçi would (ab)use his position to protect his own interests.

Simultaneously, the current U.S. administration has been laboring over a last-minute foreign policy coup before the upcoming elections, scheduled for November. With the U.S. president’s Palestine-Israel “peace plan” duly rejected, he turned to the next best thing: The Balkans. 

After three years of passivity and slumbering, the highly symbolic — but in practical terms, worthless — U.S.-brokered “statements of intent” to reinstate flights between Belgrade and Prishtina marked their howling return to a region left practically deserted by their European counterparts. 

Couple that with the U.S. president’s son (who does not hold an official position in the government) voicing his support for the withdrawal of American troops from Camp Bondsteel and mounting pressures from Richard Grenell and other Trump minions to remove the tariffs on Serbian imports and you end up with a Shakesperean enfant terrible. 

Similarly to Netanyahu in Israel, Thaçi learned to utilize the geopolitical thunderstorm, consisting of an aggressive Trump administration and an ever passive European Union, to his own benefit, with the potential to shake up the geopolitical landscape of a politically fragile region beyond the borders of Kosovo. 

The wider ramifications of this earthquake are yet to unravel. With Kurti mentioning Thaçi’s intention to return to a controversial, U.S.-backed, land-swap deal between Kosovo and Serbia, the coming months will be filled with uncertainty and tension. Should the aforementioned deal become a reality, it would have the potential to disrupt the entire region beyond the current pandemic. 

Geopolitical implications aside, internally, the damage has already been done. 

The toppling of a democratically-elected government marks a sound disruption of an already fragile relationship between decision-makers, institutions and citizens, potentially beyond repair. 

After 12 years of independence, Kosovo’s political scene is still haunted by the ghosts of an ever-entrenched political and economic elite striving to retain its power and wealth at the cost of its own citizens. In addition, the weak institutional setup and a generally passive EU have significantly contributed to the unravelling of yesterday’s events and threaten to hamper the progress Kosovo has made in socio-political terms. 

Civil society groups and NGO’s have actively promoted the consolidation of an ever-active and vigilant civil society, as witnessed through the burgeoning growth of women’s marches, advocacy groups and LGBT rights groups. The electoral victory of a previously “outsider” political party that promised to challenge the “corruption as usual” politics that had gone before was a further sign of democratization. 

The noxious suffocation of Kurti’s fresh approach to politics, representative of the societal thirst for change, poses a significant challenge to these achievements. 

Yet, yesterday’s events also highlight an opportunity for Kosovo’s young democracy. Every night at 8 p.m., people who are respecting social distancing measures during the COVID-19 pandemic have been flooding their balconies to manifest their dissatisfaction with the current events. Furthermore, an unprecedented wave of solidarity for PM Kurti could be witnessed on social media and beyond, with politically passive people expressing their dissatisfaction as well. 

Under normal circumstances, new elections would have to be called, which could have strengthened VV’s political momentum. The current pandemic therefore seemingly benefits Thaçi’s offensive, self-serving and destabilising political agenda, which has the ability to cause further detrimental harm. 

Nevertheless, something seems to have been unleashed within society. 

An active and engaged electorate will make it impossible for the elites to remain in power once life returns back to normal, and it has the potential of shaking up the political and economic landscape for years to come. It is now that the EU needs to actively ensure that this momentum survives the disruption caused by COVID-19 by working with the people of Kosovo vis-a-vis a selectively interventionist U.S. 

The coming months will be long and eventful. But in true Shakespearean fashion, we might yet witness yet another plot twist in this ever-evolving drama.

Feature image: Atdhe Mulla / K2.0.