The Republic in Free Fall

How depressing the whole situation is. How depressing that young, educated people, who are projected as the hope of this country, are so immature, so childish, so selfish and ultimately, completely ignorant of leading this country towards prosperity.

Within the last ten days, mortal remains of victims of the Kosovo war were discovered in three locations where there are suspected mass graves. According to the descriptions of journalists who have gone there, it is difficult terrain for vehicles to pass, it is forested and only someone who has been involved in these crimes in one way or another could even indicate the exact location.

28 years of vegetation, however, fail to hide the macabre double crime: murder and hiding the bodies.

I heard no reaction from the EU. 

I heard about the hope of the families of the forcibly disappeared, that perhaps these would be the remains of their loved ones, and that they would finally be able to come to terms with the fact that they are truly gone and will never return. That they would finally be able to bury them with all the honors. 

How serious. Tragic that this reminds us that the victims became such that Kosovo had an imaginary state, with political parties, an assembly, a government and a president, dependent on funding coming from the diaspora. Without authority. Without power.

* * *

For 18 months, Kosovo has been immersed in a deep political crisis that those who caused it refuse to see. Within these months, we went to elections three times and ended up with approximately the same result – a party that had more votes than the three opposition parties combined, but not enough the first time to pass the government, the second time to elect the head of state, as is the case now.

It's as if they didn't learn from the experience of the spring, where the agreement process for the election of a consensual candidate, which in fact ended up being imposed by a political party, could not move forward because neither party was serious about electing the mayor, due to personal and party calculations.

With the June 7 elections over and after the votes of the diaspora were counted, it became clear that the VV had the simple majority to pass both the Speaker of the Assembly and to vote for the Government. But, declaratively, allegedly with the aim of avoiding elections, an agreement was sought with a political party to ensure the quorum votes for the election of the president of the state.

* * *

So, they were told that the political parties needed days to negotiate this position, which until yesterday was called "ceremonial", even though it is far from ceremonial if you carefully look at the powers assigned to it by the Constitution. And so it was done. 

The constitutive session was not scheduled for a day or two, or even two or three weeks: it was decided to convene one day before the deadline set by the Constitution expired. It was believed, or at least so it was said, that an agreement would be reached by then and that perhaps we would finally have institutions, without having to exhaust the deadlines set by the Constitution for electing the Government and the President of the State.

So what happened? 

PDK went to the first meeting, saying there were no red lines. It left the meeting saying we remain in opposition. The Alliance refused every invitation, insisting that Kurti had to accept the 6 conditions set by it. LDK was the only one to go, even four times, despite the pause that Abdixhiku's vote of confidence took within the party, and in the end nothing.

"It is the issue of the president. The LDK has requested that the president be proposed by the LDK, of course the names should be discussed with the partners and on this point we have not had an agreement. The offer of December that the LDK take not the Speaker of the Assembly, but the Deputy Prime Minister and some ministers, is not sufficient, it is not dignified even to provide a solution to the crisis we are in. We cannot accept it as such, if you want the LDK in government then the LDK must be represented"

This is what Abdixhiku declared after his fourth meeting with Kurti yesterday. He added that they were far, very far from an agreement. 

What Abdixhiku did not explain was why the current offer for the Speaker of the Assembly, Deputy Prime Minister and several ministries continues to be insufficient and undignified and why this does not imply sufficient representation. 

Why has the post of president, until yesterday ceremonial, now become the nail that stopped the saw? Or is it that some ministries requested were more than offered or even that there was no certainty that the 18 votes of the LDK could be counted on to form the quorum for the election of the president of the state, according to a negative ruling by the Constitutional Court.

Whatever the reason for the disagreement, what happened the day before yesterday and yesterday mostly suits the narcissistic politicians of Kosovo, who do not understand that with their immature political actions they are actually endangering our already fragile state. They do not understand that by eroding the foundations of the state, we are only preparing the ground for the history of the introduction of this column to be repeated.

I have written it many times, and I cannot help but repeat it this time: if we had invested all this energy in the development of Kosovo, who knows how far we would have come.

* * *

And while I can understand the third party's ambition to gain as much power as possible regardless of numbers, what I don't understand is the winning party and the tactics it employs.

The first time they stubbornly pushed Haxhiu's candidacy forward, saying "we have the right to elect the speaker of parliament" while they did not have enough votes, they found a legal loophole in the Constitution, and deliberately did not let up until the chairman of the session, who happens to be the same one now, made decisions according to instructions and put things to the vote as "they should have." In the end, the matter went to the Constitutional Court, and it came out with a verdict that obliged the deputies to constitute the Assembly within 30 days and that a candidate could not be put to the vote more than three times.

Knowing that it did not have the votes to vote for the Government, VV found ways and means to drag out the procedure as much as it could, so that it reached the point where new elections would be announced and held in December, when it counted on the large presence of the diaspora. It won 52% of the votes, a majority that it lost after six months.

In April of this year, he did not give up the idea of ​​keeping all three posts. He did not make any serious efforts to reach any agreement with the LDK (Abdixhiku says that it was undignified that he was not offered the post of speaker of parliament then... or maybe I misunderstood, that it turns out that in one election it is a dignified post, and in the other it is not.... whatever...), probably because Abdixhiku was already making the calculation for the epochal overcoming of the crisis with Osman at his side... and they took us to the elections again. In vain.

And now the third round has come – and now I really don't know who is asking for what. They didn't say "three Albanians and five parties" for nothing – we have proven fantastic at complicating our lives with such politicians.

What is happening now is a repeat of what happened last time, only slightly differently. If they had wanted to come to an agreement, that matter would have been over long ago. But no. They don't come to an agreement because they don't trust each other. And again they enter into calculations: whoever comes out of this game more guilty is more likely to lose votes in the next elections.

So, without any need, the VV decides to misuse yet another wording that is not fully defined by the Constitution (which does not indicate what happens if the Assembly is not constituted within 30 days) and postpones the constitutive session in search of an "agreement", knowing that with this action it only increases the antagonism within the political scene. 

* * *

This is coming with the election in December. If they really intend to send us to the elections, we will be there in December. Or at least that seems to be the goal, considering that the opposition will go to the Constitutional Court demanding clarification of the 30-day deadline. And until then, any friendly communication, no matter how feigned these days, will turn into mutual accusations about who was to blame for us getting to this point.

How depressing the whole situation is. How depressing that young, educated people, who are projected as the hope of this country, are so immature, so childish, so selfish, and ultimately, completely ignorant of leading this country towards prosperity.

You have tired us of looking for loopholes in the Constitution.

There is no reason to postpone the election of office bearers, as in the end they will all be ceremonial positions.

So get up! Gather here, divide the positions, create about 35 ministries, with about 150 deputy ministers, elect whoever you want - but end this circus, because we're going down.

And don't tell us that you are defending the republic, because that is a lie. Thanks to you, the republic is in free fall.

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