Kosovo : Sejdiu président

Fatmire Terdevci indique dans Transitions Online  que le Kosovo a trouvé un successeur au président Ibrahim Rugova, décédé il y a peu, plus rapidement que prévu mais que la détermination de son statut risque de prendre un peu plus de temps.

Replacing the charismatic Ibrahim Rugova as president of Kosovo would not be an easy task under the best of circumstances, but Fatmir Sejdiu inherited the job at a time of deep uncertainty surrounding the province’s unsettled status. 

Sejdiu may never be seen as the “father of the nation” as was Rugova, who passed away in January 2006. He may never be revered and supported by his people the way Rugova was. But he has solid backing from all Kosovo Albanian major political forces, as was demonstrated by his election on 10 February. 

Parliament voted 80-12 to make the 54-year-old law professor Kosovo’s second president since a NATO campaign made the province de facto independent in 1999, though it nominally still forms part of Serbia and Montenegro. 

By contrast, Rugova was elected in 2002 with just 64 votes, the bare minimum required under Kosovo’s charter. 
In his first speech to the parliament after his election, Sejdiu promised to cooperate with all political parties and institutions as well as with the international community. “That is my constitutional and civic responsibility, especially at this moment, when we are so close to our goal, which is Kosovo’s transformation into an independent and sovereign state,” Sejdiu told lawmakers. 

Talks on the final status of Kosovo were scheduled to start in Vienna in January but had to be postponed when Rugova, who was also the nominal head of the negotiating team, died of lung cancer. 

Before his election to the highest office Sejdiu was secretary general of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), the largest political force in Kosovo. He was the only candidate for president. He was a party member from its establishment in the early 1990s and is known as a moderate politician. 

“Sejdiu has built his profile over 16 years and he’s always been a hard worker,” said Lulzim Peci, executive director of the Kosova Institute for Policy Research and Development think tank. It’s an assessment shared by even some critics of the LDK leadership. 

If Sejdiu enjoys broad backing domestically, the international community was also happy. Indeed, Peci said he thinks that Sejdiu’s election came as a result of local factors as well as some international pressure. 

The Contact Group, a consortium of six countries that take an interest in the region, welcomed the smooth succession, as did UN special envoy Soren Jessen Petersen, the head of the international mission in Kosovo. 

“I already made a commitment to the new president that I will help him,” Petersen said on the day of the election. Petersen expressed his satisfaction that less than three weeks after the tragic loss of the late president Rugova, he could now report to the Security Council that the democratic institutions of Kosovo had done their job. “This is a big day for Kosovo,” he said. 

Indeed, the succession issue was resolved with remarkable efficiency. By contrast, it took three months of negotiations to put together Kosovo’s first ruling coalition after a general election in November 2001.

To read the article in full, visit the Transitions Online website.