The same analysts and journalists appear in TV debates in Kosovo at least three times a week, regardless of whether they have expertise on the topic of the day. In fact, there is no standard of competence required of the people who are offered a platform on TV to provide “analysis.”
This results in low-quality discussions with poor content and the term “analyst” has become distorted and now often has negative connotations.
An analyst or TV commentator should be prepared and actually be knowledgeable about the topic being discussed if they’re to add value to public debate. The same person should not be analyzing the economy, health, security and constitutional law.
Everyone’s an ‘expert’ on the constitution
When a political or legal crisis breaks out, including ones related to the Constitutional Court, TV commentators, whose careers and education are not related to law, let alone to constitutional law, feel entitled to interpret Constitutional Court decisions and their implications.
Although this practice is not new, a particularly egregious example sticks out from a few months ago. On March 29, five panelists, Arben Ahmeti, Halil Matoshi, Adrian Çollaku, Krenar Shala and Blerim Gashi, appeared on the TV show Politiko on Kanal 10. With the moderator Kushtrim Sadiku, they discussed an article by the online portal Gazeta10 titled “Constitutional and Political Tremors.”
This TV debate happened the same day Gazeta10 published an article entitled “EXCLUSIVE: Political scene in fear, the decision from the Constitutional Court may bring down the President.”
The article dealt with a request from former Assembly Member Veton Berisha of the Egyptian Liberal Party and Albert Kinolli of the United Roma Party of Kosovo addressed to the Constitutional Court after February 2021 general elections. Berisha and Kinolli asked the court to assess the constitutionality of the votes from the Romani Iniciativa party in Serb-majority municipalities. According to Berisha, there was an orchestration of votes between the Romani Iniciativa and Srpska Lista. Allegedly Srpska Lista also made members of the Serb community vote for Srpska Lista-aligned Bosniak candidates, along with candidates from other minority communities.
Berisha and Kinolli’s accusations of voter orchestration were backed up by the Electoral Complaints and Appeals Panel (ECAP) and by the Supreme Court, which found that Romani Iniciativa received more votes than there are potential voters from the Roma community in Serb municipalities.This, according to the Supreme Court “breaks the connection between the citizen and their real representative in the Assembly.”
As a result of this, according to the legal opinion transmitted by Gazeta10, there are two illegitimate Assembly members from minority groups in the Kosovo Assembly who voted for Vjosa Osmani as president on April 4, 2021. The article claimed that the findings of the ECAP and the Supreme Court would be used in the decision of the Constitutional Court to declare illegal the mandate of two deputies from the minority groups and return the mandate to Berisha and Kinolli. According to the article, this would risk Osmani being overthrown from the post of president. As a result, the Assembly would have to vote for a new president or the country would have to hold elections.
This “exclusive” news was shared by many other media outlets, which fueled public uncertainty about what would be done. The evening debate in Politiko featured panelists with no legal knowledge to address this.
For an hour and a half, Ahmeti, Matoshi, Çollaku, Shala and Gashi, the usual analysts and journalists from the Politiko TV show, half-heartedly discussed and “analyzed” legal-constitutional issues, topics that are not that simple.
“The case of Avdullah Hoti,” “The Pacolli case,” “Election of the president – unconstitutional,” “Voting for the election of the president will be repeated,” “With the fall of the president, the government also falls,” “New national elections and elections for president.” These were some of the topics over which the political commentators argued, referring to previous cases when the decisions of the Constitutional Court had played a key role in the political scene in Kosovo.
But the loudest voices prevailed, the phrase “Constitutional Court,” was thrown around and imaginary political scenarios were created. However, there was an absence of any real knowledge of the subject.
Their inaccurate analysis that the president would be dismissed was taken as fait accompli and they skipped to the political implications with the question: Does the Kurti government have 81 votes for the election of the new president?
Analysts dismissed the government led by Vetëvendosje (VV), “since when the president is dismissed, the government falls… Have you ever read the Constitution, how come you don’t know that?” said one analyst to the other.
This approach made it clear that the political commentators thought that by reading the Constitution they would be able to interpret it, recognize constitutional law and legally analyze it with other panelists.
But interpreting constitutional law is not easy and expertise is essential.
Unfortunately none of them are lawyers, nor do they have the expertise to make predictions about how the situation would develop. So, I ask: Was it a quality debate? What were the conclusions of the debate? What does the public gain from these television programs?
The audience was offered a nonsensical debate without substance.
In April, less than a month after the Kanal10 article came out, the Constitutional Court published their decision to reject Berisha and Kinolli’s claims. The court stated that “votes are personal, equal, free and private. Votes cannot be declared invalid based on the ethnicity of the voter.” This decision clarified the situation and extinguished all the confusion.
Even if the Constitutional Court accepted Berisha and Kinolli’s claims and the mandate of the two other Assembly members was revoked, there would be no changes or implications for past Assembly decisions. This is due to “legal certainty,” a constitutional and international principle referring to the guaranteed legality of previous decisions made by a legislative body.
The most important reason why the mandate of the president and other Assembly decisions would not be affected, even if the appeal was successful, is that the appeal was individual and was addressed to the Constitutional Court narrowly relating to the two Assembly members. According to the legal principle non ultra petita the Constitutional Court may not decide on issues other than those that are submitted to it.
Besides completely inaccurate content from this media outlet in their “exclusive” article and from the analysts in the Politiko debate, they also inaccurately claimed that this would lead to the dismissal of the president and the fall of the government.
In debates where a complex topic such as the constitution are discussed, lawyers should dominate the discussion, along with journalists and analysts who monitor the justice system. These participants would provide genuine analysis backed up by legal competencies, which would benefit the audience as well as the television program, giving them a credible and professional image. Finally, it would have raised the quality of the show’s content.
Kosovars need discussions that aren’t based on loud voices, insults and ignorance. At the end of televised debates, viewers should be left informed, not irritated.
The freedom to express and exchange opinions about political, legal and social issues is everyone’s right and adds value, regardless of the quality of these opinions. But in such debates the freedom to participate should be based on competence.
Feature Image: K2.0 Illustration via MidJourney.
