Political Maturity Comes First, Power Follows

AIM Pristina, October 7, 2000

All politicians, parties, political activists, and those parts of the electorate that are so passionately involved in the ongoing election campaign, should first read the decree on municipal administration issued by U.N. administrator in Kosovo Bernard Kouchner. Once they read it and if it helps them to get rid off at least a portion of their political blindness, they might understand that the fanatical energy they invest trying to ensure the unconditional victory of their party and, of course, the unconditional defeat of they rivals, is not only wasted, but also working against them.

If the Kouchner Decree ended with Chapter VIII and Article 45, maybe some justification or understanding for all their dirty campaign tricks could be found. But the decree does not end there. Up to Article 45, it deals with relations between various bodies of local government offering interesting solutions. Representatives of the people will encounter in it organizational forms of government and local administration of which they so far knew nothing. The document defines in great detail powers and responsibilities aimed at ensuring professionalism at all levels, especially in the executive branch of power and the civil services. Fully and competently formed services are one of the basic preconditions for the eventual transfer of power from international representatives to elected local bodies. The provisions dealing with the makeup of municipal bodies and the decision-making process, for instance, indicate a strong intent to achieve rigorous protection of minorities and their interests. It appears that in the decision-making process possible ethnic majorization faces so many hurdles that it has, in fact, become almost impossible. Still, the document involves a model purportedly also based on international conventions of local self-government, and its solutions have to be tested in practice.

Future representatives of the people and municipal officials will also face rules that border on moral obligations. Among the most interesting are the ones regulating their exclusion, or obliging them to self-exclusion, from the process of making decisions on matters that are of particular importance to them or people close to them. Furthermore, before the assembly meets for its first session its members must publicly present a complete report on their financial standing, being also obliged, within the shortest possible time, to present a report on any changes that have occurred meanwhile.

As far as it is known, Kosovo political parties had no objections to those provisions of the Decree which regulate local authority, the decision-making process and protection of minorities. For some Albanian parties and several minority parties, however, the issues of bilingualism (Albanian and Serbian as two official language s - Article9) and especially of the forming of the Ethnic Communities Bur eau and its local offices that should offer all civil services to members of ethnic minorities (last paragraph of Article 23) have remained an open question. As far as the use of official language is concerned, the dissatisfied parties demand that an ethnic threshold be established for that purpose, that is, that bilingualism be applied only in such communities which have a certain percentage of minority population. Thus it remains uncertain whether bilingualism will be in effect in those ethnic communities where there are few or no minority members. Fiercer disputes, however, arose over the issue of the Ethnic Communities Bureau. Its name suggests that bureaus will be opened for all ethnic communities. But in practice such offices will be opened only in the areas inhabited by the Serbs. Except for the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo, which backed the idea, all other Albanian parties, and parties of other ethnic communities, labeled it a tendency to cantonize Kosovo and make the Serbs more privileged than other minorities.

For several weeks these issues were at the focus of a public debate, particularly among Albanians. In this rhetorical confusion, however, not a word of criticism could be heard concerning the articles of the Decree that follow. Chapter IX contains several lengthy articles under the common heading Special Dispositions. This part specifically says that until the Statute and Rules of Procedure of an assembly and its bodies are adopted, authority will be exercised by UNMIK bodies. Local representative will have no powers until all municipal services that will engage in professional and responsible performance of civil duties are formed, until a budget and its expenditure are specified, and effective means of controlling all financial flows are established. Even when these conditions are met, the civilian administrator of Kosovo retains the right to intervene in all cases he/she deems necessary. Until all the above conditions are fulfilled, a municipality, its bodies and all its civil services will be governed by a municipal administrator. The statute and rules of procedure should be adopted and election of officials carried out in line with the procedure prescribed by the Agreement on full transparency and under the instructions of a civilian administrator. This is a very complex procedure that cannot be initiated without honest cooperation and a sense of compromise. A particularly difficult task is the forming of administrations and competent and responsible municipal services virtually from scratch.

This experience is exactly what Albanian political forces lack. They could start attaining it in a rudimentary form if they were willing to cooperate, at least when the burning issues are in question. But they won't. They prefer to act as they did in the past. Ultimately, they will be forced to learn how to cooperate and make concessions. Until then, however, they will remain outside the decision-making process even if it concerns the most crucial matters. By continuing to clash, they undermine their own attempts to come to power. Their disputes in which so much energy is spent in vain indicate that they are not yet mature to exercise power and that they will not be allowed to until they change.

Fehim Rexhepi

(AIM)