Partia Demokratie e Kosovës

Partia Demokratie e Kosovës
Party leader	Kadri Veseli
Secretary General	Uranium Ismaili
Deputy Chairman	Agim Ali Shaqir Totaj
founding	May 14, 1999
Place of foundation	Pristina
Colours)	Blue and white
Parliament seats	24/120
European party	European Conservatives and Reformists Party (EKR)
Website	www.pdk.info

The Partia Demokratike e Kosovës (abbreviation: PDK ; Albanian for "Democratic Party of Kosovo") is the largest political party in Kosovo . The party was originally shaped by social democrats and was oriented towards the left in the political spectrum. It is now considered a center-right party and is a member of the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformers in Europe (AKRE).

history

The party was founded on May 14, 1999 by the KLA's political wing and was first called Partia për Progresin Demokratie e Kosovës , but was renamed to its current name on May 21, 2000.

The party's chairman has been Hashim Thaçi , who was a leader in the KLA during the 1999 Kosovo War. The first Prime Minister of Kosovo, which at that time still belonged to Yugoslavia, was Bajram Rexhepi after the end of the war . Before Kosovo's declaration of independence on February 17, 2008, the PDK, like most Kosovar Albanian parties, campaigned for an independent and sovereign Kosovo.

In the parliamentary elections of 2010/2011 , the party won around 32.11% of the votes cast. Thus she was able to secure 34 seats in parliament for herself. The party entered into a coalition with the Aleanca për Ardhmërinë e Kosovës and the minority parties to form a government .

At the end of February 2014 Jakup Krasniqi , Fatmir Limaj and other members of the PDK broke with Thaçi and founded the Nisma për Kosovën . The PDK is now represented in parliament by 31 members .

International criticism

The PDK is often criticized for its close involvement with organized crime. Various intelligence reports report that Hashim Thaçi , the leader of the PDK, is the head of the Mafia structures in Kosovo. Other people charged with organized crime include Xhavit Haliti , Kadri Veseli , Fatmir Limaj , according to Weltwoche . The criticism mainly concerns drug, arms and human trafficking , contract killings, extortion and corruption. The close entanglement between the PDK and the Mafia stems from the fact that the party secret service SHIK (whose director was Kadri Veseli) was able to continuously expand its power after the Kosovo war, in particular through targeted assassinations of politicians from other parties.

Since taking over government in 2010, the PDK and Hashim Thaçi have managed to artificially inflate the state apparatus in Kosovo and thus employ party members and their family members in the state. For example, Gani Thaçi, the brother of Hashim Thaçi, is the director of the Kosovar insurance agency. Because the Republic of Kosovo has one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe, employment in the state apparatus is used as a means of securing loyalty. It was common practice for the Hashim Thaçi government to order radical wage increases in the two- to three-digit range shortly before the elections and to employ thousands of new employees. Since tens of thousands of families depend on those who work in the state sector, the PDK was able to maintain its power through this.

One of the most frequent criticisms of the PDK also concerns corruption. The PDK is notorious for enriching itself, particularly in the context of the privatization process and the awarding of state contracts. Corruption reached a climax during the construction of the motorway between Prishtina and Tirana, when construction costs climbed from around 300 million euros to over a billion euros. The number two of the PDK, Fatmir Limaj, was infrastructure minister at the time and was personally responsible for it.

A number of other PDK MPs are involved in further (alleged) criminal offenses:

• Azem Syla - former defense minister: In 2016, the Kosovar public prosecutor's office accused him of being the leader of a corruption gang of 38 criminals who had stolen property worth 30 million euros. The allegation is bribery, money laundering, fraud, abuse of office, falsification of documents and tax evasion. Syla subsequently resigned from the Kosovar parliament.

• Adem Grabovci - leader of the PDK parliamentary group: Part of the "Pronto" scandal (an audio recording by EULEX in which Adem Grabovci, Hashim Thaçi and Vlora Çitaku discuss which relatives have not yet been employed in the state apparatus. A short time later, Adem Grabovci's uncle became Director of the University Hospital Prishtina) and another scandal in which his sons beat up several police officers and got away with impunity.

• Kadri Veseli - As director of the PDK secret service, he is accused of several dozen contract killings of political opponents.

• Bajram Rexhepi - Interior Minister: Several million euros disappeared when several contracts were awarded. The best-known example is a case of the production of passports by an Austrian company, in which around 1.5 million euros disappeared without a trace. Later about 200,000 of them were discovered in a chauffeur owned by Kadri Veseli.

International cooperation

In the first decade after the war in Kosovo there was rapprochement between the PDK and the Socialist International .

Web links

• Official website of the Partia Demokratike e Kosovës (Albanian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ EurActiv
2. ↑ www.tagesanzeiger.ch
3. ↑ dpa: Kosovo: Hashim Thaçi, darling of the West or Mafia boss? In: zeit.de. December 15, 2010, accessed December 8, 2014 . 
4. ↑ www.nzz.ch
5. ^ Fiona Endres: The social welfare recipient and the criminal network in Kosovo. SonntagsZeitung , October 30, 2016, accessed October 31, 2016 . 
6. ↑ lajmi.net ( Memento of the original from September 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ↑ koha.net  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ↑ www.indeksonline.net
9. ↑ derstandard.at
10. ^ Hannes Hofbauer : Experiment Kosovo , Promedia-Verlag, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-85371-285-6 .