AKI still without director, security connoisseurs say not political stability is damaging security issues

The incumbent Prime Minister, Avdullah Hoti and Vjosa Osmani, who exercise the post of president of the country, have not yet reached consensus on the appointment of the new director of the Kosovo Intelligence Agency since 17 December 2020, when Hoti had demanded that Kreshnik Gashi release the position of chief of this institution.

The Law on AKI specifys that “president of the Republic of Kosovo, together with the prime minister, appoints the AKI director within 20 days of work from the day the position remains at 11x1>.

The Kosovo government has told Kosovo Prees that there is still no development in this direction, while the presidency has not answered the questions sent.

For security issues connoisseur Besa Kabashi-Ramaj, the AKI case is just one of the examples of how security issues in Kosovo are damaged as a result of not political stability.

This is one of the most obvious examples of how security issues are badly damaged when there is no political stability in the country. This is one of the examples that has become very public, but we note what damage it is causing despite the fact that such damage has been caused in Kosovo in a long way by not having political stability, not having stable government, not having governments that manage to complete a mandate and not having institutions or governments in this case that are able to carry out institutional memory, with the handover of mandate from one government to another”, Kabashi-Ramaj says.

Until the new chief's appointment, AKI is led by deputy director, for which Besa Kabashi-Ramaj considers that with such a responsibility the deputy director would have to be charged in the first 20 days pass and not in such a long period.

It considers that all leaders of position and opposition in Kosovo would have to deal with this issue and find consensus candidates to run AKI, on the contrary, estimates that vacuum in security institutions is dangerous.

While according to security connoisseur Drizan Shala, the AKI executives' appointments are made through political preferences, which, according to him, has damaged the institution.

“The position of the director of AKI is the key key key to national security of the Republic of Kosovo, we are on the verge of development of the new government, we are on the verge of developing the new government dialogue, in the absence of a director in all these processes can undermine the security of the Republic of Kosovo because decision is based solely on a task leader, regardless of position, its professionalism, which has intelligent scope but lacks a director AKI that in domestic and foreign political decision-making processes, we are loanable to exercise the position the Kosovo Agency for Intelligence has been appointed with, he says.

He adds that the shift of several AKI directors in a short period has also damaged Kosovo's image, as he put it to convey the message that the country cannot keep professional institutions away from politics.

The incumbent Prime Minister, Avdullah Hoti on December 17th 2020, had asked Kreshnik Gashi to clear up the position of the AKI chief, for which he was supported by the president's task adviser Vjosa Osmani, but that the reasons for such a thing were not disclosed.

Since 2015 alone, three directors have been changed to AKI. The only one to have completed a full mandate has been the 2009 nominated Union Smaj.