Financial Times article on Central Kastrati: Newer Chairman Trying to Face Ethnic Differences

Periscope has translated the FT article, and below you can read it complete in Albanian:

As he goes to a gathering located Kastrati, an ethnic Albanian and mayor of the city of Kamenica, he greets a member of his staff, who is an ethnic Serb. Because Kastrati doesn't speak Serbian, they can barely trade words with each other. Kastrati says he has done something really extraordinary in the small Balkan state -- he has taken a Serb vice president to communicate, not only with municipality employees but also with Serbs, who make up about 5 per cent of residents in the city.

After several bloody wars in the Balkans, which led to the founding of modern-day Kosovo, most Serbs had left the country for fear of revenge. After two decades, the remaining Serbs make up only 5 percent of the total population of 1.8 million and live apart from the Albanian majority. 30-year-old Kastrati became the youngest mayor of a municipality last December with a promise to take note: to make the town a multiethnic country.

“Kamenica must be a good example of unity and common life for Kosovo”, Kastrati told the Financial Times, at a café near his office. “Everyone is a citizen and should be treated like that. ”

In a country where they still feel the effects of war, its approach is rare. Relations between Serbs and Albanians have been subject to negotiations over the past decades, initially mediated by the United Nations and now by the European Union, entities that both Kosovo and Serbia are aiming to join. The future of Kosovo Serbs remains the priority of talks, but very often the focus has been on preserving minority rights more than the integration of the two communities still looking at each other with suspicion.

The general approach of the international community in Kosovo and our government has been to establish borders on ethnic grounds, with the opinion that the more Serbs there are in these municipalities, the more they can exercise their rights”, said Krenar Gashi, a policy researcher at the University of Ghent.

Under negotiated agreements in Brussels, the so-called Serbian Communists Association will give Serbs a right to self-rule, in areas such as Education and Health. Many Serbs believe that without this mechanism, they will be constantly marginalised. However, many Kosovo Albanians have protested, with the concern that this association could create a powerful disproportional bloc that has the capacity to prevent majority will.

As negotiations continue, tensions mount, at the time Kosovo and Serbia's president discuss changing borders. In this context, Kastrat's comprehensive approach has given him great attention. It has installed translation booths at the Communist Assembly so that Serbs can participate without obstacles during the meetings.

Also, in his cabinet, there are more employed women than men -- a rare thing in Kosovo, where women's participation in the workforce is the lowest in Europe. Kastrati hopes to attract foreign investors and thus stop abandoning the town of 30,000 inhabitants from young people -- so as it goes, about 1,000 flee from the municipality every year.

As chairman, he individually earns only half of the revenues he received in the past job, such as Asamblist in the Pristina municipality. One of its distinctive initiatives is an educational form where Serbs, Albanians and Roma can attend at least a few hours together.

“Change must start with children and they must learn to communicate, to avoid accusations of prejudice”, Kamenica Deputy Chairman Bojan Stamenkovic has said.

Kastrati's approach stems from personal experience. His father, who wished for equal rights of Albanians in the former Yugoslavia, was a political prisoner for 12 years and had died fighting Serbian forces. But he had never talked about policies of ethnic divisions.

My father had no problem with Serbs. He was opposed to the regime, seeking freedom”, Kastrati, who was 10 years old when his father was killed, said. If Kamenica's initiative functions, he says, then there would be no need for an association of Serb majority municipalities, which would further divide Kosovo.

Skeptics say Kamenica has always had better interethnic relations during the time of Yugoslavia, and, according to them, Kastrati's approach would function in other Kosovo municipalities. “Tensions are smaller because there has been less violence during the war (in Kamenica), said Agron Demi, a political analyst from the GAP Institute, as well as a citizen of Kamenica's origin. However, Kastrati has said it is time to admit that there are more issues in Kosovo that unite people than separate them.

“We all have the same problems: unemployment, lack of economic development, health and poor education, as well as a lack of cultural activities”, he has said. /Periscopi/