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www.tenc.net * Emperor's Clothes
===
Can Democracy be Constructed Based on Terror Fraud? -
The BHHRG Report on the Kosovo 'Elections,' 17 November 2001
[This report was prepared by Dr. David Chandler. It is Posted with the kind permission
of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group, 28 November 2001. For some quite
interesting Further Reading, go to end of page.]
===
Faking Democracy and Progress in Kosovo
1. Background
This was an extraordinary election.[i] The pronouncement of US Ambassador Daan
Everts, OSCE Mission chief, running the elections was very apt. These elections were
truly extraordinary in many respects.
One extraordinary aspect is that they were held in a legal vacuum. Kosovo is neither
an independent state nor any longer under the government of Serbia or the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia. The question of statehood is to be postponed to the indefinite
future while the United Nations assumes the responsibility for governing the province,
through the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) headed by the Secretary-Generals Special
Representative (SGSR) the former Danish foreign minister, Hans Haekkerup.
The provincial government elected on 17 November reflects this lack of international
legal framework. The new post-election arrangements are outlined in a document titled
A Constitutional Framework for Provisional Self-Government in Kosovo.[ii] This is
not a constitution but a framework for a constitution and not self-government but
provisional self-government. The ill-defined legal and political status of the
former Yugoslav province, reflects Western powers diminished respect for state
sovereignty and the crumbling formal framework of international legal and political
equality. (1)
Kosovo is an extraordinary political experiment because the system of dual power
of an international governing administration alongside a subordinate,
domestically-elected administration, which developed in an ad hoc manner in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, is here for the first time officially institutionalised. The new
framework for a constitution of Kosovo, is the first modern political constitution
to explicitly rule out democracy. The preamble states that the will of the people is
to be relegated to just one of many relevant factors to be taken into account by the
international policy-makers.[iii]
The executive and legislative powers of the UN Special Representative remain
unaffected by the new constitutional framework. Chapter 8 of the framework lists the
powers and responsibilities reserved for the international appointee, which include
the final authority over finance, the budget and monetary policy, customs, the
judiciary, law enforcement, policing, external relations, public property,
communications and transport, housing, municipal administration, and the appointment
of regulatory boards and commissions. And, of course, the power to dissolve the
elected assembly if Kosovos representatives do not show sufficient maturity to
agree with his edicts.[iv]
2. Sham Elections
Many international plenipotentiaries, including US President George Bush, Nato
Secretary-General Lord George Robertson and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi
Annan, urged the Kosovo public to turn out to vote, particularly the Kosovo Serbs.
When it emerged that around 60% of the Albanian and 50% of the Serb voters had taken
part, the elections were loudly hailed by the international organisers and observers
to be a glorious day in the history of Kosovo and as a huge success.[v] The
question of why the international community chose to spend millions of dollars holding
elections for a provincial administration with token office-holders with highly
circumscribed powers was, unfortunately, rarely asked.
These elections were extraordinary in the importance attached to them, not just
because of the lack of power awarded to the victors, but also the fact that the
results were largely irrelevant once the electoral engineering of the OSCE and UNMIK
was
