Kosova Democratic Institute (KDI) referring to findings in the Progress Report published on November the 10th 2015, criticizes public institutions for being at early stages of preparations for socio – economic development. In accordance to its mission, KDI addresses three main issues highlighted in the Progress Report. They include the fight against corruption, Assembly’s work and issues related to elections in Kosovo.
According to Report, the major reason for the lack of concrete results in the fight against the corruption is related to the weak justice system. Courts and prosecutor offices remain politically influenced institutions, whereas, except the lack of integrity, there is a lack of human and financial capacities. As a result, they struggle in administering priority cases, especially high profile corruption cases. The opportunities to change the situation were not used by the government due to the lack of political will and cooperation between public institutions in fighting corruption. The most influenced sector, according to Report is the public procurement, where the government’s integrity has been considered very low due to weak administration and politicized procurement system.
In order for the public institutions to achieve positive effects in fight against corruption, KDI proposes the following recommendations:
a) The Judicial and Prosecution Councils shall have as a priority to increase financial and human capacities in anticorruption efforts, as per new legislative reforms, these two bodies have greater autonomy.
b) The government shall simplify the unnecessary corruption fighting institutions and empower the cooperation between police and prosecutor.
c) The government shall increase the integrity and capacities of the public procurement institutions such Procurement Review Body (PRB) and Public Procurement Regulatory Commission (PPRC) and complete the management boards of these institutions.
As per Kosovo Assembly, the Report highlights that it went through a non-effective year, because it started with a 6 months post elections blockade, and it is ending with another blockade of parliamentary life as a consequence of Agreement for the Association of Major Serb Municipalities and the Demarcation with Montenegro. However, while functional, Report points out three Assembly’s weaknesses where improvement is needed: i) Executive oversight, ii) oversight to budget implementation and public finances, and iii) functionalizing the independent agencies.
As KDI continually pointed out, the Report confirms the weak role of the Assembly to oversee the Government and ensure a politically unbiased and merit based public administration; to monitor the budget implementation, public finance control and address the findings of General Auditor. The Government has pressured the Assembly to accelerate the procedures on adopting the legislation for judiciary and human rights by sacrificing the parliamentary debate. Furthermore, the Government withdrew some project – laws arbitrary.
As per Assembly obligations towards Independent Agencies, Report continues to confirm findings for which KDI continuously drew attention to, that the Assembly is failing to functionalize Boards with members, and the same are being politicized with political party members, and Assembly is not managing to call for accountability for the agencies that has established itself. KDI:
a) Calls the political parties to seek for solutions that guarantee regular functioning of the Assembly.
b) Calls for strengthening the roles of deputies and parliamentary committees in overseeing the government for a professional and non-politicized administration,
c) Requires from parliamentary committees to be more active in monitoring the budget and expenditures following on the Audit findings.
d) Calls for a more empowered Assembly mechanism to oversee and functionalize Independent Agencies.
In the elections field, the Report raised three issues as the most important i) lack of electoral reform, ii) failure of the Assembly to audit political party annual financial statements and electoral campaign expenditures and iii) evaluated positively the conduct of extraordinary elections in Graçanica municipality.
a) The Kosovo Assembly shall initiate the electoral reform process, through which, best international standards and fair citizens’ representation will be guaranteed. Part of electoral reform must be also the adoption of Law on political parties, where minimal criteria for internal democratic functioning of the parties would be determined.
b) The Commission of Monitoring Public Finances must urgently conclude the selection process of independent auditors, in order to complete the auditing of political party finances for 2013 and 2014. We recommend that as part of electoral reform, to review the Law on Financing of Political Parties, because it has many shortages especially in the area of sanctions and audit deadlines, which does not guarantee adequate monitoring of political parties
c) We encourage the CEC to continue with similar practices, including here the cases where parties that appoint members in CEC have higher interests. CEC must save its independence as constitutional institution, without falling into political influence. In order to achieve this, there must be changes in legal provisions that enable parties to replace their members at CEC without any particular reason. Furthermore, the secretariat capacities must be strengthened, and especially of the Office for Registration and Certification of Political Parties.