KOSOVO'S DIVIDED OPPOSITION

C O N F I D E N T I A L PRISTINA 000257

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E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/29/2019
TAGS: PGOV PREL KV
SUBJECT: KOSOVO'S DIVIDED OPPOSITION

Classified By: Ambassador Tina S. Kaidanow for Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).


1. (SBU) Summary: Kosovo's three opposition parties lack the
unity and parliamentary strength to challenge the PDK-led
coalition. Ramush Haradinaj has failed to unify the
opposition behind him and the remaining opposition parties do
not embrace his party's leadership against the government.
Their fractious, ineffective opposition allows Prime Minister
Thaci considerable room to govern with few parliamentary
checks on his power, though the AAK will make a concerted
effort in November's municipal elections to demonstrate
greater electoral strength and thereby challenge the
government to call national elections in 2010. End Summary.


2. (SBU) Divided leadership and conflicting agendas mark the
relations between the opposition parties. AAK's
parliamentary presence is too small to fuel its ambitions to
rally the opposition behind it and its rogue past deters
formal collaboration by opposition parties AKR and LDD. AKR,
the pet project of wealthy businessman Bexhet Pacolli, has
never committed itself to sustained opposition to the
government and is just as likely to support coalition
legislative goals as to oppose them. Nexhat Daci's LDD lacks
political seriousness and although it often votes with AAK in
the Kosovo Assembly, it is ignored by Haradinaj, who prefers
to court potential renegade LDK MPs.

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AAK: The Contender
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3. (SBU) The Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) is
Kosovo's leading opposition party. Although its thirteen MPs
are a small presence in the 120-member Assembly, AAK is the
best organized and most determined in its opposition to the
coalition. Kosovo politics are personality driven, and its
political parties are top-down organizations. AAK is no
exception, with party leader Ramush Haradinaj wielding near
total control over daily activities. Haradinaj, however, has
been more effective than his counterparts in creating a party
that resonates as more than just a vanity project. Active in
all policy discussions and more vocal in its criticism of PDK
than other opposition parties, AAK is a relevant political
presence with a strong base of support in the country's
western Dukagini region, and it is intent on strengthening
its position nationally.


4. (SBU) Since Haradinaj's acquittal on war crimes charges
at the Hague in 2008, AAK has been single-minded in its
determination to get back into power after its 2007 loss to
PDK. Last year the party maneuvered in vain using
parliamentary diatribes, an intensive media campaign and
threats of litigation to force the government to call early
national elections before its mandate ends in 2011. With
municipal elections looming on November 15, AAK sees an
opportunity to test its electoral strength.


5. (SBU) This spring AAK held a series of public
roundtables to trumpet public policy proposals designed to
sell the party as a serious contender to lead the next
government. As part of its strategy, AAK is attracting - and
sometimes poaching from the competition - prominent figures
that ensure ongoing media attention. In December 2008,
Blerim Shala, one of Kosovo's most influential public
intellectuals and the former editor of the large-distribution
Zeri newspaper, joined AAK in a senior party leadership
position, bringing with him media savvy and insuring a loyal
tabloid that daily extols AAK and criticizes the government.
Within the Assembly, AAK has grown from ten MPs to thirteen
in recent months due to defections from other parties, and it
is now the single largest opposition party in the Assembly.
Principal among these parliamentary moves was former LDK
Finance Minister Haki Shatri's decision to defect to AAK in
the spring. Shatri is now positioned to head the new
Assembly Public Accounts Committee where he will lead the
committee's oversight authority of government spending and
give AAK a prominent platform to criticize the government.
AAK is also openly wooing other LDK MPs, most conspicuously
its ambitious caucus leader Lutfi Haziri, to jump ship.


6. (SBU) Despite its tactical resourcefulness, AAK and the
rest of the opposition usually lack the votes in the Assembly
to challenge the coalition. Thus frustrated in its political
ambitions in the Assembly, AAK attacks the PDK-led coalition
through a barrage of press releases alleging official
corruption, orchestrated media coverage from the party
friendly Zeri newspaper, and filing periodic judicial
challenges to government decisions. The AAK's propensity to
advance its fortunes through veiled appeals to ethnic
Albanian nationalism and an uncompromising, provocative
stance towards sovereignty and security issues, especially
regarding the tinderbox north, injects a troubling tone of
jingoism into political discussion amid efforts to expand
Kosovo's multi-ethnic institutions.


7. (SBU) Despite its drive and organizational skills, AAK
is hampered by a legacy of corruption and a paltry record of
accomplishments from its tenure leading the government from
2004 to 2007. AAK remains a pariah to many Kosovo voters and
will have its work cut out in future national elections to
improve on its fifth-place showing and nine percent electoral
tally in 2007.

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AKR: The Conflicted Collaborator
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8. (SBU) The New Kosovo Alliance (AKR) is arguably a rich
man's hobby masquerading as a political party. AKR was
founded in 2006 by Kosovo's richest businessman, Bexhet
Pacolli. Pacolli, a wily tycoon who owns a Swiss-based
construction and engineering consortium, was initially
dismissed as a dilettante, and AKR was given slim chances of
surpassing the five percent electoral threshold in 2007 to
claim any Assembly seats. However, AKR introduced itself to
voters with a strong, business-friendly message that
resonated among the emerging entrepreneurial class of small
business owners. In the closing weeks of the electoral
campaign Pacolli reportedly poured more money into political
advertising for AKR than all other parties combined. The
party emerged with the third highest vote tally at 13 percent
and gained 13 (now reduced by defections to ten)
parliamentary seats.


9. (C) Pacolli is an absent party leader, spending at least
as much time out of Kosovo as inside. In his absence, AKR is
run by its two parliamentary leaders: Ibrahim Makolli, a
former human rights activist; and Ibrahim Gashi, a law
professor with no prior political experience until joining
AKR. Both have little in common with Pacolli or each other.
Pacolli, who regularly trots the globe to lobby foreign
governments to recognize Kosovo, fancies himself a statesman,
not a retail politician. Despite a solid record of speaking
out on rule-of-law issues and sponsoring policy roundtables -
including an April conference in Washington that discussed
regional development and security challenges - AKR lacks a
clear focus politically and oscillates between criticizing
the coalition and cooperating with it. This past spring it
launched what Makolli described as a non-partisan campaign to
rally the opposition and civil society around an AKR-led
reform agenda. The effort was a publicity stunt for which
AKR lacked the savvy and organizational heft to turn into the
credible political movement it had envisioned. A common
refrain in Pristina is that AKR's criticism of the government
increases in direct proportion to how far Pacolli is away
from Kosovo. The other opposition parties dismiss AKR as a
silent partner to PDK.

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LDD: The Grudge
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10. (C) The Democratic League of Dardania (LDD) formed in
the wake of LDK's disastrous party convention in 2006 when
former Assembly Speaker and LDK heavyweight Nexhat Daci lost
the party leadership battle to Fatmir Sejdiu. Daci, who
earned a reputation as a difficult and authoritarian Speaker,
founded LDD in 2007 with a core group of loyal supporters.
Appealing to traditional LDK voters who were disenchanted
with the party's coalition with AAK, he led LDD to a fourth
place electoral showing in 2007. The party, founded more on
spite than any discernible political principle, appears to
exist for no other reason than to obstruct the rest of
Pristina's political establishment. Its ten MPs, a police
line-up of untalented LDK leftovers, are usually reliable, if
flaky, supporters for AAK's parliamentary machinations of the
day.


11. (C) A current example of LDD's shallow talent pool is
found in the brouhaha over which party will chair the new
Intelligence Committee. The committee must be chaired by the
opposition and LDD is in line for it. However, the "best"
candidate LDD could put forward is a thuggish MP, Gani Geci,
infamous for throwing chairs at the 2006 LDK convention and
beating up the current Budget Chairman in a brawl in the
Assembly building. Prospective members of the new committee
from all parties refuse to countenance this man as chairman
and have held up establishing the committee. LDD's caucus
leader last week appealed to POLOFF to help end the impasse
and it was clear he was physically afraid to confront his
fellow MP.


12. (C) Comment: The three opposition parties resemble the
personalities of their leaders. AAK is calculating,
organized and reckless in its ambitions to return to power.
AKR, the part-time pursuit of a rich and distracted
businessman, resembles a NGO or a consulting group more than
a political party. LDD is the bitter, grudge-bearing
ex-spouse of a broken LDK marriage and lacks the political
vision or maturity to rally anyone behind it. Disparate in
their goals and collectively too few in number to challenge
the coalition, the opposition is unable to provide an
effective check to PDK's control of the government. The
concentration of power and economic opportunity within a
tight circle around Prime Minister Thaci have led to growing
cries within the Assembly - including by senior PDK MPs -
that the government is corrupt and undemocratic. But the
Prime Minister runs PDK with a strong, confident hand and
appears unconcerned about grumbling within his own ranks.
With enemies like AAK, AKR and LDD - who needs friends?
KAIDANOW