/

Kosova: Lëvizja VETËVENDOSJE! no.214

5. September 2010

Development of Privatisation

In extracts from an article this week, Albin Kurti explains why Lëvizja VETËVENDOSJE! opposes privatisation of Kosova’s publicly owned resources.

“Privatisation takes the citizen out of politics. When social and public property is privatised, society and the public get weaker, the citizen loses what they have in common, and the gap between political institutions and citizens grows wider.

Property (made) private is exclusive: it belongs to someone and no one else. There is nothing left to say – the others are excluded. The politicisation of citizens today is being imposed as emancipation for the social and the public which neo-liberalism has removed from politics, degrading it into technical management.

Democratic control of the economic sphere is deprived as never before….

The problem grows when politicians want to be technical and not political. Maybe by being technical, they got richer. Politicians who do business are businessmen, aren’t they?

Conflict between the government and people becomes a conflict between private profit and social interest. Privatisation is not a thing but a relationship (between society and the public who are expropriated and politicians, companies and banks which get richer).

This is the reason why the international regime technically is not allowing a technical government of locals. It would be a formalization of what we always had. It is not a matter of having too many political parties, but too many parties, and little politics.

The Kosova Government cannot help us with any economic development for the well being of citizens since it considers Kosova’s economic potential a burden from which it needs to be released. The public sector is not being destroyed because it is being mismanaged, but because the goal is to destroy it. They do not aim to protect and put in order the public sector, but to eliminate it.

Through privatisation, they are doing precisely this. Now Kosova has become a country where it is easier to lose your job, than find one. Social assistance in Kosova is not given to citizens for a more dignified life, but so that they don’t protest against the Government and existing order.

Politics without economic policy is a spectacle. Kosova needs a paradigmatic shift from the ‘free market’ to ‘domestic production’.

An open market has brought us to the situation where we are flooded by foreign products and especially Serbia’s. The open market has killed domestic production and made its growth impossible. It is the economy that must comprise the market and not the market, the economy. For this paradigmatic shift, a precondition is that policy includes economic policy. Thus, not like now when even electricity supply is higher in Prishtina since trade and bureaucracy flourishes here, and not production.

As Professor Ismet Hamiti states, with privatization as an argument on its own, the only outcome is the privatization of profit and the nationalization of losses. The current
development of Kosova is no more than the development of privatization.

“Local and international politicians say that public companies must be sold because they are being robbed. This is the resignation of the state to thieves. Since it wasn’t possible to stop the thieves, it’s necessary to sell what thieves were going to steal anyway!” Albin Kurti

Action against Privatisation

This week Lëvizja VETËVENDOSJE!’s centre in Prishtina organized a symbolic action against the privatisation of Kosova’s key resources, in which Kosova’s politicians were not put on sale, but offered to all takers for free, so long as they remove them from Kosova.

Using puppets dressed in suits, with faces constructed from manipulated photographs of the politicians who manage Kosova’s public property, a display area was constructed where people could view the product on offer.

By each politician, a large board ironically listed their special characteristics.

These politicians were mocked in this way because not only are they overseeing the privatisation of Kosova’s essential national resources, but they have run-down Kosova’s public companies and put them on sale at a cost far below their real value, whilst
filling their own pockets with the sidepayments they demand for tenders.

Development Council in Vitia

This week, Lëvizja VETËVENDOSJE! established a Development Council for the Movement’s centre in Vitia. The 14 member Council consists of activists of various professions, including teachers, lawyers, a doctor, biologist, chemist and electrical engineering technician.

The founding of Development Councils is the first stage of the re-organization of the Movement, announced earlier this summer. These Councils are responsible for devising and implementing strategies for the consolidation and expansion of our centers.

This Council has the responsibility for forming smaller structures called ‘Points’ in all villages of Vitia municipality. It will also organize an assembly, from which its leadership will be elected democratically.

Vitia is the first Development Council to be founded, after Prishtina. Albin Kurti and Dardan Molliqaj attended the first meeting of the Council.

E-mail denne artikel