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VOTE FOR
CHAOS
Early
elections in Kosovo are just a way for the west to cut and
run
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The UN secretary general's special
representative in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, plans municipal
elections this September or October. "When will they e-e-ever
learn?" say the despairing words of the sixties anti-war
song.
Early elections are likely to be a
dagger at the heart of democracy in Kosovo. Picture it. Just 16
months will have passed since the bombing stopped, the Serb army
and murdering/raping paramilitaries withdrew, and several hundred
thousand exiles returned to burnt-out houses and broken-down power
stations. Before that, decades of autocratic rule from Belgrade
under Milosevic and Tito. Before that? Hundreds of years of
autocratic rule under the Ottoman empire.
These elections will further
democracy in Kosovo just 16 months since the bombing stopped? To
quote John McEnroe - "you cannot be serious!"
"The tendency of the
international community after conflict has been to cut and
run," says the Ford Foundation's Michael Edwards, author of a
new book Future Positive, "pushing through early elections
instead of staying for the long term and consolidating conditions
for an emerging democratic policy."
Dame Pauline Neville Jones, who
led the British delegation at the Dayton negotiations, says
bluntly: "We should have learnt from the Bosnia experience
where elections were held prematurely for the same reason - the US
desire to get out fast. The elections went ahead with predictable
results - the return to power of nationalists. There is even less
excuse to commit the same error twice."
Kosovan society is still too
wounded, too riven with fresh hatreds, too economically insecure,
fundamentally too unstable to sustain pluralist politics. Right
now Kosovans have other priorities. Top of their list are the
4,000 missing persons plus 2,000 hostages held in Serb jails,
including the women's rights campaigner Flora Brovina.
Albanian Kosovans still wait to
open mass graves to find their loved ones. The province lacks the
basic election infrastructure. Even King Solomon would have lifted
his toga and run rather than preside over the quagmire of Kosovan
voter registration. The pre-bombing population of the capital
Pristina was 250,000. Now it has swollen with internal
displacements to around 600,000. Many villagers cannot return home
because their houses remain gutted, farms and villages in thrall
to anti-personnel mines and unexploded ordnance.
Credible rumour holds that some
200,000 Albanians have crossed the border into Kosovo, faking
residency. Last seen going the other way, at least 150,000 Serbian
Kosovans have fled as refugees.
The ruling UN mission has decided
that only citizens resident in Kosovo on January 1, 1998 will be
allowed to register to vote. A Kosovan community leader says this
makes a mockery of voter registration. "There were 40,000
Serb military police and paramilitaries in Kosovo on that date.
Will they be registered to vote? Between 300,000 and 500,000
Kosovan Albanians had already fled to safety by then. Many will
not be back in Kosovo in time to register."
UN security council resolution
1244 is committed to a multi-ethnic Kosovo. Even if the 95,000
Serbs still living in the province want to register to vote, it
has become too physically dangerous for them to venture out. Just
a few days ago, a car of Serbs, including small children, on their
way to a market was blown up by a freshly placed mine.
Kosovan political parties are
mostly no more than clans led by young warriors who fought with
the UCK (Kosovan Liberation Army). These ambitious young men see
politics as a route to personal fame and fortune - especially
fortune. Other than wanting an independent Kosovo they have few
policies.
Certain Kosovan party leaders are
well-known to international police as gangsters and mafia leaders
with links to organised crime throughout Europe, Asia and North
America. "They are extremely dangerous," a US police
officer with the international police in Kosovo told me. "It
would be laughable to turn an entire country over to such a gang
of thugs if it wasn't so sad for the common people who have to
live here."
Almost from the moment the bombs
stopped raining down from 15,000 feet last June, leaders of UN and
OSCE missions endorsed these criminals by dealing with the first
self-appointed Kosovan leaders they came across. They did not take
the trouble to include and consult with the wider range of readily
available moderate and representative Kosovan community leaders.
Moderate Kosovans, both Albanian and Serb, watched in growing
horror as the charade unfurled.
As another senior UN police
officer quoted in the Observer admitted haplessly: "I think
we all - aid workers, diplomats, journalists - made a mistake. We
didn't speak to the right people."
The British journalist Ian Mather,
an experienced defence correspondent, has just completed six
months in Kosovo as media development coordinator with the OSCE.
"The chances of an election being covered fairly by the media
are virtually nil," he says. "Radio TV Kosovo, run by
the OSCE, broadcasts for two hours each evening when there is
electricity. Koha Ditori is the only independent newspaper. Other
newspapers are owned by or beholden to political groups - a number
are mafia protected. Some even border on incitement."
It has taken other European
societies centuries to develop key components of democracy and
inclusion - law, order, free expression, political parties with
developed election manifestos, freedom to register to vote and to
place your votes in safety and secrecy, without fear of
intimidation.
From a US perspective, Kosovo was
always likely to be a minor problem in a faraway place, a tiny
province in a tiny nation tucked away in the cockpit of Europe, or
a Somalia in the making. Holding elections must seem a reasonable
and honourable way to restore democracy. Holding them so
prematurely, as part of the not-so-hidden agenda to get the heck
out, is not especially honourable. Indeed, it dishonours
democracy. It dishonours the tax-payers who funded the estimated
$35bn to free Kosovo for democracy and entry into the European
family. It dishonours the forces that rescued Kosovo from
Milosevic's maw.
The last helicopter is revving up
on the roof-top.
Lesley Abdela served in Kosovo in
1999 as deputy director for democracy at the Organisation for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
©Lesley Abdela 2000