PRISTINA, Kosovo, Feb 9, (AP): Kosovars started casting their votes Sunday in a parliamentary election considered a key test for Prime Minister Albin Kurti whose governing party achieved a landslide win four years ago. This is the first time since independence in 2008 that Kosovo’s parliament has completed a full four-year mandate.

It is the ninth parliamentary vote in Kosovo since the end of the 1998-1999 war between Serbian government forces and ethnic Albanian separatists that pushed Serbian forces out following a 78-day NATO air campaign. Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s independence, proclaimed in 2008. The vote will determine who will lead the Kosovo side in negotiations on normalizing ties with Serbia, which stalled again last year.

Those talks brokered by the US and the European Union did not figure high on any party’s agenda. Some 2 million eligible voters are to cast their ballots in 941 polling stations. They will elect 120 lawmakers from nearly 600 candidates from 27 political groupings. One independent candidate is also running. The Kosovar parliament has 20 seats reserved for minorities regardless of election results; 10 of which are for the Serb minority.

Voting started at 0600 GMT, according to Kreshnik Radoniqi, head of the Central Election Commission.It is set to end at 1800 GMT. Kosovars abroad started voting on Saturday at 43 diplomatic missions around the world where some 20,000 voters from the nearly 100,000 of the diaspora, have physically cast their ballots.

Others sent their votes by post. Kurti’s left-wing Vetevendosje! or Self-Determination Movement Party is seen as the front-runner but is not expected to win the necessary majority to govern alone, leaving open the possibility the other two contenders join ranks if he fails to form a Cabinet. The other contenders are the Democratic Party of Kosovo, or PDK, whose main leaders are at The Hague tribunal accused of war crimes, and the Democratic League of Kosovo, or LDK, the oldest party in the country that lost much of its support after the death in 2006 of its leader, Ibrahim Rugova.

The parties made big-ticket pledges to increase public salaries and pensions, improve education and health services, and fight poverty. However, they did not explain where the money would come from, nor how they would attract more foreign investment.