Eurasia Press & News
Kosovo’s government will not rely on “hybrid creations” in its fight against organised crime and corruption, Deputy Prime Minister Driton Selmanaj has told BIRN, defending the much-criticised abolition of an anti-graft task force created 10 years ago by the chief rivals to Selmanaj’s ruling Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK.
The government has faced sharp criticism over its decision in October to get rid of the anti-corruption task force, not least from Kosovo’s chief backers in the European Union.
In an interview, Selmanaj backed the preparatory work started under the previous government – which also included the LDK – on a potential vetting process to weed out corrupt officials in the judiciary, a process Albania embarked upon several years ago under pressure from the United States and European Union.
But he stood by the abolition of the anti-corruption task force created in 2010 under the now-opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK.
In an October tweet, Germany’s ambassador to Kosovo, Jorn Rohde, said the move “raises serious concerns about political will to tackle corruption issues effectively,” echoing a statement by the EU’s rule of law mission in Kosovo, EULEX. There was criticism too from Kosovo’s Anti-Corruption Agency and Kosovo civil society, which noted the “valuable contribution” made by the body.
“The only beneficiaries will be those corrupt politicians who, as reported in the media, have been investigated by this Task Force for various abuses,” Mexhide Demolli-Nimani, director of the NGO FOL, told Radio Free Europe in October.
But Selmanaj, who spent eight years as director of one of Kosovo’s largest non-governmental organisations, the Democratic Institute of Kosovo, KDI, said the unit was “unconstitutional”, politicised and ineffective.
“Should politics have such an instrument in hand?” he asked, citing the danger of “abuse, blackmail or threat.”
“We are taking decisions to move forward, so that we can use public money as much as possible to restore legality and constitutionality… to restore normalcy in this country,” Selmanaj told BIRN.
He dismissed concerns expressed by some that Kosovo’s Special Prosecution service may no longer have the specially trained police officers it needs to investigate high-level corruption, telling BIRN that the police would continue working on open cases and that the prosecution had the right to ask for police support.
Need for new police structure
Two decades since it broke away from Serbia in war and 12 years after it declared independence, Kosovo continues to struggle with the problem of graft and organised crime.
Selmanaj, whose portfolio as deputy premier includes the rule of law, said that since taking power in June this year, the government had set about reviewing all decisions in this field by previous governments, including the creation of the anti-corruption task force in cooperation with EULEX.
Under the decision, the government requested that the public prosecution create such a body, a step Selmanaj said was unconstitutional.
The task force, he told BIRN, was an example of “hybrid creations” to “camouflage the fight against organised crime and corruption in Kosovo.”
He argued that the task force was ineffective. “Somewhere we went wrong,” said Selmanaj, who himself has stirred controversy and triggered calls from civil society groups for his resignation over recent remarks he made about the search for people still missing from Kosovo’s 1998-99 war. BIRN asked Selmanaj about the row but he did not respond.
Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti of the LDK took power in June after the party brought down the previous government it was part of, led by the now-opposition Vetvendosje party, in a no-confidence motion and cobbled together a new majority in parliament.
Before its downfall, the previous government had pledged to draft a proposal for a vetting process in the justice system by December this year and a working group comprised of civil society experts drafted a preliminary document.
Selmanaj said a new working group, which also involves representatives of international organisations and Western embassies, would continue the work.
“It must be understood that in Kosovo everything has been built with international assistance so we have not built something completely ourselves,” he said. “We also said that we cannot choose good models without having representatives of the justice institutions such as the Prosecutorial and the Judiciary Councils at least”.
Selmanaj said those in charge of the interior ministry and police had been asked to “work closely with the international community” in building a police structure “in full compliance with the law on the Kosovo police.”
“We are taking good decisions for the future,” he said, “if not for us, then for the future of our children.”
Police and judicial bodies cannot be put in the hands of politicians, he said, “because the politicians are the ones who should be afraid when they are visited by the justice institutions.”
