Return to the Institutions: Zubin Potok

By: Dragutin Nenezić

A week ago, Serbs returned to local institutions in four municipalities in northern Kosovo, three years after their withdrawal. A great deal happened during those three years: the exit from institutions and the removal of Serbs from the barricades; the violent takeover of municipal buildings by Vetëvendosje and the subsequent illegitimate elections; the events in Banjska and all their consequences; legal violence, police occupation accompanied by expropriation, the elimination of the dinar and everything that relied on it; and finally, guarantees stronger than ever before, whose balance sheet includes the loss of at least three Serbian lives, the life of one Kosovo police officer, around 45 Serbian detainees (a number that constantly fluctuates), and an unknown number of Serbs on wanted lists.

In this series of texts, I will address what can be done in these municipalities after all of this. That can certainly be no more than what the general framework of current Kosovo policy allows—something I have already written about: a return to institutions to the extent possible (which has already occurred at the municipal level), the Association/Community of Serb-majority Municipalities if the international community applies sufficient pressure on Pristina, and some form of status for the Serbian Orthodox Church—all of which was recently reaffirmed in the U.S. Congress, to the astonishing lack of any reaction in the Serbian public. Still, even within such constraints, this does not have to amount to very little, provided there is genuine will to pursue authentic local politics based on protecting the interests of the Serbian people.

Finally, in this series I will focus exclusively on the possibilities for legal action, given that the scale of financial devastation in the four municipalities, as well as mass (and largely mono-ethnic—this time Albanian) employment, is still unclear. Once sufficient data become available, I will write about the potential legal consequences. Until then, I can only conclude that these three years have been a demonstration exercise of what the rule of law looks like for Serbs under Albin Kurti’s government—and, consequently, what those who have been persistently pushing Serbs into such a system for over a decade actually want for them in Kosovo.

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Compared to the other municipalities, Zubin Potok has faced relatively fewer problems. The withdrawal from institutions was not complete, so some Serbs remained in municipal bodies, while the municipality itself relocated from its building, which is currently occupied by police forces under the pretext of issuing documents.

This is essentially a continuation of the police occupation of Zubin Potok, which began with the illegal construction of bases and ended with a court victory for local Serbs—albeit without an epilogue in the form of enforcement or removal of those bases.

The bases are still there, and one of the things the new municipal authorities could do is to join the demand that court rulings be enforced on its territory—something that should not be controversial for Kurti, who so often speaks about the rule of law.

In this regard, the fate of the municipal building mirrors the fate of everything Serbia invested in—from residential buildings, through the “Bar Bilje” and “Ivo Lola Ribar” factories, to the regional water supply system. The buildings were taken over by the Kosovo Police, the factories by the Kosovo Privatization Agency, and the water supply by its equivalent within the Kosovo system.

In other words, everything that was Serbian (at least in terms of funding sources) is now Kosovo’s. At the same time, these are all areas in which local self-government has certain competencies that could be used to make them municipal, or at least to ensure they are not used to the detriment of the local community.

At the systemic level, public consultations were held in August this year on the logo, flag, and draft statute of the Municipality of Zubin Potok, as the now former mayor duly informed the public on his Facebook profile. The municipality’s official website—whose Serbian-language version is half in Albanian (and which features, in the background, an image of the municipal building the municipality no longer uses)—does not provide much information about the outcome of these consultations, but it would certainly be worthwhile to learn more.

This is particularly so because the draft statute available on the website contains interesting provisions on, for example, inter-municipal cooperation, public participation, and oversight by the relevant ministry. Here again we come to the core problem the new authorities will face in each of the northern municipalities, which I have also written about before: the Law on Administrative Review of Municipal Acts, adopted at the end of last year—again without any reaction—which explicitly provides the following:

“Article 8 – Mandatory Review of Legality

1. Mandatory review of legality entails the review of acts of the Municipal Assembly in accordance with the relevant law on local self-government;

2. Acts of the Municipal Assembly subject to mandatory review of legality are: 2.1. statutes; 2.2. municipal regulations; 2.3. general decisions of the Municipal Assembly; 2.4. agreements on inter-municipal and international municipal cooperation; 2.5. local spatial and planning documents;

3. Municipalities are obliged to submit acts for mandatory review of legality within seven (7) days from the date of their adoption;

4. Receipt of documents referred to in paragraph 2 of this Article shall be carried out physically, electronically, or in another appropriate form by the JUD of the Ministry responsible for local self-government affairs, which issues a receipt confirmation;

5. Acts of the Municipal Assembly referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article that the municipality fails to submit within the deadline referred to in paragraph 2 of this Article shall be subject to regular review of legality pursuant to Article 10 of this Law.”

In other words, whatever the new authorities attempt to do in relation to any regulation or general act will be subject to mandatory review by Pristina. What kind of functionality can local self-government have when it has not yet properly established what was done (badly, of course) in the previous period, and must at the same time contend with such centralization?

Finally, Zubin Potok has one major problem that strikes at its very heart: the decision on the preliminary protection of Mokra Gora and Gazivode, which places a quantitatively vast and qualitatively most important part of the municipality under a special regime, and whose operationalization is already well underway.

This endangers the municipality’s most important resources, as well as the property interests of everyone who resides there—from permanent residents to owners of vacation homes.

Naturally, this too—like everything listed above—has not been done properly, further confirming that Kosovo authorities rank among the very top in the region when it comes to not knowing their own regulations or how to apply them.

Guided by the successful experience of resisting expropriation in this municipality, I hope that something similar will be organized in response to this harmful and unlawful decision as well, so that I may also take part—hopefully with the same outcome.

All statements presented in this text are the personal opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors. KoSSev is not the author of the text.

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