Ramush Haradinaj is back in Kosova, acquitted by the ICTY. Anyone who watched the trial or read the transcripts, as I have, could only conclude that the evidentiary record required acquittal. There was no evidence directly tying him to the crimes charged in his indictment. 

The only possible way he could have been convicted was to conclude that the KLA was a “criminal enterprise,” and the trial chamber of the ICTY, appropriately, was unwilling to make such a finding.  The KLA was a guerrilla insurgency, not a criminal enterprise. 
 

Haradinaj is charismatic, smart, and seasoned in politics, having served effectively as Kosova’s prime minister in the previous coalition. His acquittal and re-entry into political life will have a significant impact. He is probably the one figure around whom a meaningful opposition to the current governmental coalition can crystallize.

Hashim Thaçi, the current prime minister, and Haradinaj’s target, also is smart and charismatic, in a different way. Thaçi also is seasoned in politics, having taken the risk of organizing the first post-war government. That effort was short-lived, rejected by the international community and by the LDK, which said at the time that there was room for only one party—the LDK. Kosova’s politics has matured far beyond that Communist concept of one-party domination. Now the LDK is a shadow of its former self, albeit led by President Fatmir Sejdiu, dignified, articulate, and adroit at western-style diplomacy.

For a time, Thaçi and Haradinaj cooperated. They, after all, were the most prominent leaders of the KLA active in politics, and their common enemies were the elements of the political elite who shrank from aggressively resisting the Milosevic regime with arms and who disdained the KLA and its leaders as rural nobodies.

But they are adversaries now.

It is good for Kosova to have vigorous political competition between the government and an opposition. The Thaçi government is off to a phenomenally good start. Thaçi earns high marks from almost everyone, even his usual critics, for shepherding independence in a dignified, sophisticated way, and for staking the reputation of his government on taking a hard line against public corruption, a cancer that besmirched the government that Haradinaj organized.

But good starts are not enough for Kosova. Results matter, and the challenges of organizing and executing a meaningful economic, energy and education policy for Kosova are daunting. An effective political opposition can hold the Thaçi government’s feet to the fire, reminding it, and the voters, of the need to produce both coherent policy and results. Challenges from a Haradinaj opposition also can remind the Thaçi government of the need to dump ineffective ministers or those whose ethics are questionable—a need which was neglected in the previous government. Declaring intolerance for incompetence and dishonesty is not enough; one must act on the declaration—a principle neglected by previous prime minister Çeku.

Two questions frame the politics of Kosova’s first year as a state.

First, will the contest between these two skilled partisans be conducted with reference to the content of policy? Or will it be a content-free contest over access to patronage? The Thaçi government needs to produce concrete, coherent plans for Kosova’s future, even though the Haradinaj opposition will shoot at them. And then, the Haradinaj opposition needs to offer its alternative policy approaches with the same degree of concreteness and coherence.

Second, how soon should the voters express their views, through the ballot box, on who has the better plan? The Ahtisaari Plan, made part of Kosova law by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, says that national and municipal elections must be held within nine months after the Ahtisaari Plan “enters into force.” When is that? Independence Day—17 February 2008? The day the Constitution becomes operative, in June 2008? When UNMIK leaves and hands over all its remaining powers to the government of Kosova? That will be far into the future, if Russian and Serbia continue to have their way at UN Headquarters in New York.

Moreover, the Ahtisaari schedule for elections was linked to the establishment of new Serb-majority municipalities in its decentralization plan for an independent Kosova. If Serbia continues to block the establishment of such municipalities and the participation of Kosovo Serbs in the political life of Kosova, maybe the spirit of the Ahtisaari Plan dictates that new elections be deferred until genuine Kosovo Serb participation in the new municipalities is assured.

The International Civilian Presence is authorized to interpret the Ahtisaari Plan and thus is empowered to choose among these alternatives. In doing so, it must also take into account whether an earlier repeat of last fall’s elections is likely to intensify the Kosova government’s attention to domestic policy or distract it. Campaign politics being what it is, and the difficulty of the policy formulation being what it is, early elections are likely to retard Kosovo’s progress into a prosperous future as an independent state.

 

Mr. Perritt is Professor of Law at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. You can find more about his work in Kosovo at operationkosovo.kentlaw.edu