The six stars and an oddly shaped sun.
Most of the meetings I attend in Kosovo require a headset. The local language is Albanian and half of the crowd is usually international, so there is a headset on your seat for a simultaneous translation of the event. Some of these translations are good, some are not. Either way, listening to one person speak loudly in a foreign language and another in English at the same time while judging the room’s body language can make a rather simple meeting more involved than it otherwise would be.
The first of the day’s two meetings was the release of the Kosovo Law Institute’s (KLI) report on judicial independence. Beyond being affiliated with the Kosovo Law Institute and reading the executive summary of the report, I didn’t know what to expect.
Used to the unsungness of rule of law reform, I was surprised to see that three TV stations and four papers sent cameras. At first, I thought they were there for the Guinness World Record attempt at the world’s largest bean mosaic in the building’s lobby. Shockingly, they were there for us and not the bean wall.
In a medium sized room sat three tables constituting a U; every seat was taken. Crystal shaped lights flickered above the faux-antique fireplace on the far wall that hid the translator. The tables were draped with bright red and blue cloth above which hovered white faces, a seemingly appropriate motif for November 6th.
This was no small event. Those faces included the Commissioner of the Budget, Deputy Minister of Justice, head of the Kosovo Judicial Council (KJC), judges, prosecutors, and a European Union representative amongst others.
Not Complete.The representatives from KLI put forward their study: the Ministry of Justice and the Budget Commission are under funding the judiciary thus making the judiciary subservient to the legislative and executive branches. Or more simply: judicial independence is a fiction in Kosovo, and this time it’s the budget's fault.
It was a convincing presentation, partially because the translator was more impassioned about the topic than the actual speakers themselves. Next, with cameras still rolling, the Commissioner of the Budget gave her opening remarks. “This doesn’t read like a report done by an independent group . . . it doesn’t discuss any of the criticisms of the Kosovo Judicial Council . . . the budget isn’t a pretense for corruption and inefficiency [in the courts] . . .”
I was thrown off by the Commissioner's confrontational tone. Judging the translator's command of English, I felt confident that the translation was reliable. So, I had to ask myself, “Who invites a hostile guest to their report’s debutante ball?”
The Deputy Minister of Justice was not much kinder. Throwing the KJC under the bus immediately, the Deputy Minister opined on how the judiciary pays enough; then, contradictorily, that the low pay doesn’t interfere with the quality judiciary; and finally that the KJC needs to think about what they are doing instead of blaming others. Again, hostile.
If a rule of law press event had a Real Housewives of Orange County alternative, this would be it. It had the same vitriol but noticeably less rosé drinking and hair pulling.
After these two damning introductory remarks, KLI rebutted. As this happened, I was still uncertain on why these two people were invited to this press release. During KLI’s fiery “You are soooo wrong” rebuttal, you could tell who worked for the judiciary or prosecutors service as they nodded vigorously with the rejection of the Commissioner’s and Deputy Minister’s points of view. Pointing to the cover photo of the report that showed the brand new executive building towering over the judiciary’s Yugoslavian-era army barracks turned office building, it was clear that KLI was the only party with facts and figures. However, it wasn’t as if minds were being changed.
After the cameras packed up, the Budget Commissioner, in her closing, stated that she really didn’t know the numbers regarding the judiciary’s budget, but the report was still wrong. As I heard this translation come through my headphones, I just hung my head in awe of this brazen rejection of personal accountability and the facts. Her comments damning the report would be on the news that night, her half-hearted mea culpa would not. What she did was a disservice to public discourse in Kosovo. But, to be honest, I wasn’t at all surprised.
As we left this meeting, I asked the executive director of KLI what just happened. Unexpectantly, he said he was pleased; people were talking about what he wanted them to talk about—good or bad. Thinking back on when I worked on campaigns in the States, I could not fathom holding a press event to introduce a platform and then give the remainder of our media time to the opponent. To me, it just didn’t make sense.
As we talked, we were headed to a meeting on European integration and the justice system. Once there, I sat down with many of the same people from the previous meeting, and I put on my headphones. Functionally, this meeting was supposed to be a 15 minute update from every part of the Kosovar justice sector, including judges, prosecutors, defenders, notaries, the U.S. Department of Justice, administers, and bureaucrats. In reality, it was a four hour long, poorly translated, bore fest. While some of the topics individually would have been interesting, the rapid fire format coupled with rough translations made it impossible to follow which department was speaking on what topic. By the end, I was dazed and not sure why the most argumentative moments revolved around the notaries. In my experience, notaries, as a people, are a pretty non-confrontational and non-partisan bunch; then again, this is Kosovo.
Leaving this meeting, I stumbled out of the building as the sun was setting. After sitting through a mere six hours of meetings, I was in a haze. I directed myself towards the store to get some groceries. Meandering past a parked car on the sidewalk, a woman approached from the other side. As I got closer, I saw a small, bespectacled child holding her hand. And as if on cue, the child burst out, “Oppan Gangnam Style” and then began to hop around. Even though this Kosovar toddler was singing in Korean, for the first time that day I didn’t need my headphones to understand what was going on.
The first of the day’s two meetings was the release of the Kosovo Law Institute’s (KLI) report on judicial independence. Beyond being affiliated with the Kosovo Law Institute and reading the executive summary of the report, I didn’t know what to expect.
Used to the unsungness of rule of law reform, I was surprised to see that three TV stations and four papers sent cameras. At first, I thought they were there for the Guinness World Record attempt at the world’s largest bean mosaic in the building’s lobby. Shockingly, they were there for us and not the bean wall.
In a medium sized room sat three tables constituting a U; every seat was taken. Crystal shaped lights flickered above the faux-antique fireplace on the far wall that hid the translator. The tables were draped with bright red and blue cloth above which hovered white faces, a seemingly appropriate motif for November 6th.
This was no small event. Those faces included the Commissioner of the Budget, Deputy Minister of Justice, head of the Kosovo Judicial Council (KJC), judges, prosecutors, and a European Union representative amongst others.
Not Complete.The representatives from KLI put forward their study: the Ministry of Justice and the Budget Commission are under funding the judiciary thus making the judiciary subservient to the legislative and executive branches. Or more simply: judicial independence is a fiction in Kosovo, and this time it’s the budget's fault.
It was a convincing presentation, partially because the translator was more impassioned about the topic than the actual speakers themselves. Next, with cameras still rolling, the Commissioner of the Budget gave her opening remarks. “This doesn’t read like a report done by an independent group . . . it doesn’t discuss any of the criticisms of the Kosovo Judicial Council . . . the budget isn’t a pretense for corruption and inefficiency [in the courts] . . .”
I was thrown off by the Commissioner's confrontational tone. Judging the translator's command of English, I felt confident that the translation was reliable. So, I had to ask myself, “Who invites a hostile guest to their report’s debutante ball?”
The Deputy Minister of Justice was not much kinder. Throwing the KJC under the bus immediately, the Deputy Minister opined on how the judiciary pays enough; then, contradictorily, that the low pay doesn’t interfere with the quality judiciary; and finally that the KJC needs to think about what they are doing instead of blaming others. Again, hostile.
If a rule of law press event had a Real Housewives of Orange County alternative, this would be it. It had the same vitriol but noticeably less rosé drinking and hair pulling.
After these two damning introductory remarks, KLI rebutted. As this happened, I was still uncertain on why these two people were invited to this press release. During KLI’s fiery “You are soooo wrong” rebuttal, you could tell who worked for the judiciary or prosecutors service as they nodded vigorously with the rejection of the Commissioner’s and Deputy Minister’s points of view. Pointing to the cover photo of the report that showed the brand new executive building towering over the judiciary’s Yugoslavian-era army barracks turned office building, it was clear that KLI was the only party with facts and figures. However, it wasn’t as if minds were being changed.
After the cameras packed up, the Budget Commissioner, in her closing, stated that she really didn’t know the numbers regarding the judiciary’s budget, but the report was still wrong. As I heard this translation come through my headphones, I just hung my head in awe of this brazen rejection of personal accountability and the facts. Her comments damning the report would be on the news that night, her half-hearted mea culpa would not. What she did was a disservice to public discourse in Kosovo. But, to be honest, I wasn’t at all surprised.
As we left this meeting, I asked the executive director of KLI what just happened. Unexpectantly, he said he was pleased; people were talking about what he wanted them to talk about—good or bad. Thinking back on when I worked on campaigns in the States, I could not fathom holding a press event to introduce a platform and then give the remainder of our media time to the opponent. To me, it just didn’t make sense.
As we talked, we were headed to a meeting on European integration and the justice system. Once there, I sat down with many of the same people from the previous meeting, and I put on my headphones. Functionally, this meeting was supposed to be a 15 minute update from every part of the Kosovar justice sector, including judges, prosecutors, defenders, notaries, the U.S. Department of Justice, administers, and bureaucrats. In reality, it was a four hour long, poorly translated, bore fest. While some of the topics individually would have been interesting, the rapid fire format coupled with rough translations made it impossible to follow which department was speaking on what topic. By the end, I was dazed and not sure why the most argumentative moments revolved around the notaries. In my experience, notaries, as a people, are a pretty non-confrontational and non-partisan bunch; then again, this is Kosovo.
Leaving this meeting, I stumbled out of the building as the sun was setting. After sitting through a mere six hours of meetings, I was in a haze. I directed myself towards the store to get some groceries. Meandering past a parked car on the sidewalk, a woman approached from the other side. As I got closer, I saw a small, bespectacled child holding her hand. And as if on cue, the child burst out, “Oppan Gangnam Style” and then began to hop around. Even though this Kosovar toddler was singing in Korean, for the first time that day I didn’t need my headphones to understand what was going on.
