The Weakest Link of Kosovo's Democracy - KFOS

cIVIL SocIETy For cLEAn PArLIAMEnT
(June – november 2007)
When a group of ten non-governmental organizations (NGOs) gathered in 2007 to
establish the coalition for clean parliament, they initiated the project “Civil Society for
Clean parliament). The coalition started work in July, and the Kosovo Foundation for
Open Society (KFOS) supported it with the first grant, to be followed by other donors
including the Balkan Trust for Democracy (BTD).
The project Civil Society for Clean Parliament aimed to establish a parliament clean
of corruption, organized crime, and any other illegal activity. The project would implement
before the general elections of November 17, 2007, compiling personal histories
of candidates from all six major political parties running for Kosova’s national
parliament. The histories would be compiled based on criteria set by the coalition.
The coalition hired more than 30 independent researchers, most of them experienced
journalists from Kosova, to investigate candidates. The researchers compiled histories
based on the articles published in national and local media during the past 8 years, but
also included information from the reports published by the Auditor general, municipal
court decisions, and other credible institutions.
Once the researchers had compiled the lists, the coalition established the independent
Overseeing Board in October, with the primary mandate to verify and controlled the
prepared reports. As a result, the lists were massively edited to create as credible and
standing list. In specific cases the researchers were requested to investigate further
to prove more credibly the suspected violations by certain candidates.
Due to the short period before the elections, the coalition agreed on a preliminary list
which was submitted to the political parties in order for them to have sufficient time
to respond with facts and counterarguments. All parties, but the two in power at the
time (LDK and AAK) responded to the coalition’s list, to be followed by joint discussions
phase.
The list published on November 4, 2007 numbered less candidates (total of 55) compared
to the preliminary list due to the counterarguments the parties had provided
in acceptance of the coalition’s initiative “Civil Society for the Clean Parliament.” The
coalition had provided the parties with three weeks-time to contest the findings. Besides,
the coalition maintained open-doors during election campaign and after the list
had been made public. As a result, three candidates had been removed from the list
due to the provided arguments.
Initiative’s results
The coalition’s initiative had a huge echo in Kosovar media all daily newspapers and
two national televisions, RTK and KTV, published the list of the candidates unclean for
the parliament. As a result, the coalition was regularly on the media throughout the
election campaign, either through interviews on the candidates or direct reference to
the initiative. In a word, the media gave a valuable impetus to the initiative through
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The Weakest Link of Kosovo’s Democracy
forum 2015