It was taking a long time, and that’s why a lot of Kosovars have been annoyed in the past few days. Now the winning parties have reached an agreement 120 days after the elections – and Kosovo is finally getting a new government. The parliament in Pristina elected Albin Kurti as Prime Minister on Monday. The 44-year-old is considered to be incorruptible and rebellious, he not only delights his followers with powerful speeches that sometimes drift towards populism. A Bob Marley fan who quotes Martin Luther King: This is how older diplomats in Pristina describe him, who are disgusted by the corrupt and previously ruling caste.
The new government is made up of Kurti’s Vetevendosje party (self-determination) and the conservative Democratic League Kosovo (LDK). Members of minorities are also represented in the cabinet. Vetevendosje narrowly won the October 6 elections, closely followed by the LDK, which was once founded by Ibrahim Rugova, the father of the Kosovar independence movement. In the past four months, the two parties have irritated the public with a selfish post-war. The enthusiasm that prevailed in Kosovo after the ballot box has long since vanished. The new government has 15 ministries (previously 21). Foreign Minister will be the philosopher Glauk Konjufca von Vetevendosje. He had been elected President of Parliament at the end of December, but his party had to leave this post to coalition partner LDK.
Kidnapped to Serbia
Before the parliamentary vote, Kurti said that after 23 years in the opposition, he now had a chance to serve the people as head of government. In 1997, when Kosovo was a province ruled by Serbia, Kurti was the leader of student protests. Pictures of his arrest by the Serbian police went around the world, and Kurti definitely entered the political stage.
He criticized Rugova’s peaceful and ultimately unsuccessful resistance to the Belgrade repressive regime. When the youth in the villages lost patience and took up arms to attack Serbian police officers and soldiers, Kurti showed clear sympathy for the rebels. As soon as NATO started air strikes against the Serbian armed forces in March 1999, Kurti was arrested in Pristina and taken to Serbia a few weeks later. There he received a 15-year prison sentence in a show trial. He was released under international pressure and returned to Kosovo.
In the home country he fought with all authorities. He spurned the UN mission, which Kosovo now administered, as an undemocratic neo-colonial institution. He also made similar allegations against the EU Rule of Law Mission (Eulex), which was to establish a functioning state after Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008.
Kurti threw eggs at political opponents
Kurti was not always wrong with his criticism. The western protectors came to terms with the local rulers, most of them former commanders of the Kosovar Liberation Army UCK, beefy guys with great power in their strongholds and with “potential for destabilization”, as the international jargon used to say. One corruption scandal chased the next, but as long as the strong men kept calm, they had nothing to fear.
The revolutionary Kurti and his followers did not leave it with fierce criticism. They threw eggs at political opponents, set fire to tear gas petards in parliament to prevent a border agreement with Montenegro, and called for boycott of Serbian goods as long as Belgrade sabotaged Kosovo’s independence by almost all means.
Even more than such actions, the West outraged Kurti’s demand that Kosovo should unite with the “mother country” Albania one day not too distant. In the meantime, he has given up on such plans and no longer imitates the former Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who did almost all appearances without a tie. Kurti is now tying a tie around his neck, and he likes to present himself in public as a family man. The electrical engineer is married to the Norwegian political scientist Rita Augestad Knudsen. The couple has a daughter.
Against border changes
The enfant terrible of Kosovar politics has promised its compatriots to fight corruption and nepotism. They are the largest flagella in the small Balkan country. Kurti said that in the future, prosecutors and judges would play the most important role in the Kosovar public, not him as prime minister. He would prefer to take the head of state Hashim Thaci out of office today rather than tomorrow. The former KLA political commissioner is at the top of the pyramid of corruption, and he negotiated with the Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic about the division of Kosovo, Kurti says. The area swap plans were supported by some EU diplomats, US lobbyists and Donald Trump’s confidants.
The new prime minister Kosovos refuses to swap territories with Serbia. However, these ideas are still in circulation. And Donald Trump needs a foreign policy success, which is why he is pushing for a Kosovo deal with Serbia. For this purpose, he has appointed his ambassador in Berlin, Richard Grenell, as special representative for the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina. The EU remains outside and must also fight for attention in Kosovo. With the rebellious politician Albin Kurti, an uncertain future begins in Kosovo – with faint hope.
Created: 03.02.2020, 06:17 PM
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