Kosovo politicians rarely give up moral resignation, resign from their posts

In recent years, several initiatives for meeting-up the Penal Code have also been undertaken, under which officials under investigation or close to corrupts would not be allowed to work in public office, but this has not been implemented in practice.

Sociologist Ardian Gola estimates that Kosovo's weak political morality, which, according to him, is the result of understanding power as privilege and not responsibility, also testifies to the high level of intellectual and ideological poverty.

The post-war political culture in Kosovo generally testifies to a deep intellectual and ideological poverty, argumentative, etc.”, he says.

According to him, “part of this cultural poverty in politics is also the weak political morality and what has now been cultivated and how long in Kosovo, the culture of impunity”.

The moment the exercise of power is not understood as a public responsibility for what it does, what you say, then normally that the resignation as a moral act and not only has not worked”, he says.

Gola thinks that in Kosovo it needs to change the thinking and ratio that is built with power, as a society and as a leadership, so that political morality can rise to that extent that leadership and politicians are responsible for the jobs and actions they do.

The small number of resignations face the large number of scandals by senior state officials, according to political analyst Imer Mushkolaj, spread without the political responsibility of these officials and the thought of part of voters in Kosovo.

“This shows about the political irresponsibilities that people have with people who deal with politics in Kosovo, which politics do not really see as a responsibility and accountability, but rather view only as a privilege and benefit”.

Because of this, we have the situation, unfortunately, where none of the policymakers and people who have public responsibilities resign, rather, with all the scandals, with all their actions, for worse, and pride, because, unfortunately, even a large part of their voters are. So, voters are not demanding responsibility”, Mushkolaj estimates.

According to Mushkolaj, the problem is the social perception of policymakers involved in the scandals.

“Today in Kosovo to be responsible means to be weak, so you are seen in the eyes of most voters, unfortunately. In the meantime, to be irresponsible, to be arrogant, to be brutal, in the way of doing politics, to be strong, and to be liked, and that has led to this situation where each of the policymakers, from figures who have public responsibilities, can do anything without fear can be punished if they do not give moral and political responsibilities”, he points out.

Frequent scandals and impunity of those responsible for them, according to sociologist Ardian Gola, have created a type of <x0 community” and “abnormality” in front of them.

“They have already become, as it were, the awareness of social and political life, have normalised in political life and become an integral part of life itself”.

“Normically in these situations to lose the sense of criticism creates some kind of immunity in relation to them even in that sense, then you get used to it and you don't provoke any sheep to rebel, to artificially a critical attitude, to seek a consistent or insistent account in relation to leadership”, Gola points out.

Corruption and organised crime are also isolated in European Commission reports on Kosovo as disturbing phenomena, along with the still independent justice system, which, as such, has not witnessed expected results in fighting these phenomena.

Meanwhile, in other cases, political responsibility is deemed a moral act for a politician to resign.

The political scene in Kosovo remembers little “moral resignation”.

In 2007, Minister of Internal Affairs in the Government of Kosovo Fatmir Rexhepi had resigned from the post, as a sign of moral responsibility to the two dead in the February 10th protest and their families.

And in June 2016, after the tragic death of two children in a water - filled pit in a suburb of the capital, Jelal Svechla, then director of Inspecination in Pristina, resigned.

These two resignations are due to rare cases of moral responsibility from politicians and leaders of institutions in Kosovo.

Last week, opposition parties as well as a part of civil society demanded the resignation of Democratic Party of Kosovo MP Flora Brovina, following the publication of a photo with heavy graphic images, which he presented as evidence of the sexual violation of an Albanian woman by Serbian military forces in the presence of her family, but who turned out to be a fake photograph, allegedly taken on a pornographic-inflicted website.

Resign! Resignment!”, were some of the calls in the protest of nongovernmental organisations in Pristina on Monday, in support of victims of the sex violence of the recent war in Kosovo, following the MP scandal.

Comparing many of the relatives and other cases in Kosovo policy that passed without anyone's resignation, political analysts recall the recent case in Austria, where on Saturday, the deputy cascalari, Heinz-Christian Strache, resigned after publishing a video scandal, where he was seen offering state contracts for a Russian company in exchange for political donations.

While moral resignations on the Kosovo political scene have been slim, in the past two presidents have been forced to give up the post of first state when faced with dismissal after Constitutional Court decisions.

In 2010, Fatmir Sejdiu had been forced to resign after the Constitutional Court had concluded that he had violated the Constitution by exercising the office of the country's president and the chairman of the Democratic League of Kosovo at the same time.

A year later (in 2011), Behgjet Pacolli had also given up the post of first state, as the Constitutional Court had found that he was elected contrary to the Kosovo Constitution.