The problem is this.
Kosovo, according to every possible standard of measurement, to every piece of evidence and every released wiretap, is captured. The prosecution is captured, the judiciary, the police, the boards, agencies, commissions — state and power and everything that comes with them. If one judicial level is not captured, another is. If a police officer is honest, there are two dishonest ones above them. If an official is just, there are two above them that are unjust. It is common to find the perpetrators and leaders of this act of capture with access to such mechanisms of privilege.
The capture comes as a result of two unnatural bedfellows — and two harmful ones at that — that lead Kosovo today. The first, members of PDK, are corrupt; the second, members of LDK, are incompetent. The former do not want to do good for the Republic — because they are too busy being corrupt; the latter don’t know what’s best for the Republic — because they are incompetent. Worst case scenario, the latter are part of a desperate attempt to find job positions for party figures that are unemployed (their unemployment speaks volumes about their ability) and to provide stability (mainly in diplomatic positions) for their sons and daughters, who have been installed in various positions.
And this capture, in the form that we have seen it up until now, naturally composes the biggest threat to the Republic’s existence — and not only that. In fact recently attacking the Republic has become a common part of public discourse; it has become a trend.
Those who have captured the state, the incompetent and the corrupt, do the damage through job vacancies. The other part of the damage comes from “Levizja Vetevendosje” (“Movement for Self Determination”), which through party battles has now entered a conceptual battle against Kosovo’s statehood; from the intense animosity felt towards their political rivals, they have created a hateful relationship with the Republic itself. So the very same people attack everything that Kosovo’s statehood represents (regardless of the fact that, out on the streets, they try to frame their rejection paradoxically as an attempt to strengthen Kosovo’s statehood).
And I am not talking about attacks on symbols and the national anthem, which surface randomly at all of their appearances, or all developments that the Republic makes internationally (in sport, culture and art); I am talking about the concept of statehood. In this concept they present a third Republic, a philosophical road that bastardizes the peaceful efforts in Kosovo during the ’90s; one that condemns the whole international peacekeeping project of the noughties, and one that rejects the act of independence itself in 2008.
Through this attempt, those very same people, in an urgent need to create an argument against the existence of the Republic, borrow arguments from our opponents in Belgrade and elsewhere. They start by raising the issue of Kosovo’s economic instability, and they end up by needing to point out Kosovo’s sovereignty to the only people that are today ensuring this sovereignty — the USA with its official policies (policies which, to be frank, are often used as a shield by the capturers and the incompetent).
As if the Republic’s internal rejecters weren’t enough, the “Serb List” also adds to it; the hybrid intervention from Belgrade and local Serbs that aims to disrupt this statehood. The problem with this List is that it uses mechanisms that are guaranteed to give a voice to minorities — within the Republic — to reject and damage the Republic itself. This guaranteed right was not initially given with the aim of damaging the Republic; it was given with the aim of strengthening it, as compensation for recognizing it. But by using the reserved seats, the right to veto and the constitutional privileges, the List damages the international consolidation of the Republic — sometimes by referring to the government of Belgrade as our government, and at others by rejecting the formation of the army; and even not voting whenever they can, in order to wreak havoc.
So the Republic has many enemies. There are those that capture it, there are thieves, there are incompetent people, there are arsonists. What the Republic does not have is friends. There are no modern heroes, random citizens that strengthen it; no people that — unlike with the current party discourse — neither harvest it, nor project it as dead. Today it is easy to condemn it. At the end of the day it goes with the flow of the childish and indifferent majority.
However, it remains both difficult and necessary to defend it. As a state — independent, sovereign and immortal.
