Voterless MPs required to be punished during sessions

Failure to participate in the vote of Kosovo's Parliamentary deputies has been transformed into practice for this legislature, which has been contributing to the gathering of agenda points since August.

Organisations that do monitor the work of the Kosovo Assembly declare for Kosova Prees that the new Kosovo Assembly regulation should include financial punishments and other penalties for MPs who, while in the Assembly Hall, do not participate in the vote, thus undermining the quorum.

Kosovo Assembly deputies, basic salaries, have a thousand and 547 euros, without counting here the wages they take for participation in sessions and parliamentary commissions, including their salaries totaling up to two thousand euros.

The current regulation of the Kosovo Parliament's work does not envision penalties for MPs who do not participate in the vote during a session.

And that's what Artan Demhaye wants from the organization Get up.

He says the new Kosovo Assembly regulation should provide sanctions for MPs who do not participate in the vote.

I think that in reviewing the Parliament's regulation, this should be introduced and that this issue should be sanctioned because MPs get mandated by citizens to represent their voice, whether on commissions or even in the plenary sessions of the Parliament, whether by pro or against what will be discussed there and whatever will be voted. I don't think it's fair that the MPs initially become part of the commission, signed on the lists that are there, and then through that signing they get the memo, because they've been part of the commission meeting or even the plenary session, and at the moment when a point of the agenda they disagree about is discussed, they automatically leave and destroy the meeting quo, whether the commission or the séance, in the Assembly. So, the moment you sign the list and become part of that meeting, I don't think it was necessary until then in the middle of the meeting to get out and ruin the quorum. This is what I think was supposed to be sanctioned by the new regulations of the Assembly”, he says.

The same requirement that the new Parliament's regulation include financial sanctions for MPs who do not participate in the vote is carried out by Agnes Haxhiu, from the Kosovo Democratic Institute.

If there were such a provision within the Parliament's regulation, Haxhiu says it would influence unblocking the work of Kosovo's Parliament.

It's very important to include a financial sanction mechanism that would sanction MPs who don't participate in the first vote and the second don't stay the whole time the plenary works are developed. This is not a new practice, because there are many parliaments in Europe as well as in countries in the region that have such a mechanism, such as the Parliament of Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia, is integrated within the labour regulation. This has in fact been a proposal and an effort by past legislatures, particularly the fifth and sixth, when a new regulation has been drafted, although it has failed to be adopted. However, there has been an effort to establish such a mechanism that in some form would increase the responsibility of MPs in the face of duties they have. Therefore, it is very important that this be decided now that it is time to review the current regulation and it is a certain possibility that to some extent it could unblock these challenges that the Assembly is facing in the quorum case could fix up to some extent”, she says.

She says that for such a thing to happen, there must be will from political parties, but stressing that it has been missing so far.

While, Allen Meta from D4D, says that the greatest punishment MPs who do not participate in the hearings or boycott the vote should receive from citizens, while stressing that even the involvement of penalties in the regulation would be welcome.

The “would be very good and beneficial for both MPs and citizens, and for the work of deputies who are engaged by citizens it would be good for these deputies to be punished if they had an example I am saying three consecutive absences which are unreasonable in the direction that might be reasoned with the pandemic at present. While, in the moments when we are able to present the deputies then punishment after the third absence or if it were hired or what punishment would be welcome”, he says.

Several international agreements, bills and resolutions from the representatives of the prime minister and ministers of the country's government have failed in recent sessions.