To discuss about this issue Life in Kosovo has invited: Leonora Kryeziu, executive director of Pristina Institute for Political Studies; Agron Demi, executive director of GAP institute; Hajrullah Çeku, executive director of the nongovernmental organization “Ec Ma Ndryshe”; and Arbana Xharra, editor-in-chief of the daily “Zëri”.
Agron Demi mentioned that there are many mayors that govern a municipality but they do not actually live in that municipality. Therefore, they (the candidates) cannot see all the problems that occur in their municipality. Many of the candidates that are running for mayor do not know the problems that they will have to face. When you ask the candidates for the problems of the municipality they usually deal with the basic one such as roads and sewages. There is no plan on how to improve the governance.
In addition, Leonora Kryeziu said that a specific issue that we dealt with in the institution is the energy management, more specifically energy efficiency. Every candidate that is running for mayor should have as one of the priorities the energy efficiency.
In addition, Arbana Xharra added that a critical thing is that a few candidates have legal problems and yet they run for mayor. People that are involved in scandals, corruption and crimes run for mayor in some municipalities. The awareness among voters should be raised and they should not vote a candidate just because they promised to hire one of the family members or that his/her business will benefit during this candidate’s mandate.
Moreover, Hajrullah Ceku’s organization has drafted a guide for citizens on how a candidate that is running for Prizren should be. Hajrullah Ceku said that none of the candidates that run for Prizren fulfils all the criteria in this guide. One of the problems is that the mayors do not differ from each other; they all use the same platform. If the mayor does not state in the beginning for which town h/she is running for mayor, the citizen cannot tell which town it is because they all have the same platform.
It was also mentioned that in 2010 GAP institute evaluated if the promises that were done during the election campaign were being kept. Mr. Demi pointed out that many of the promises were not kept and they even seemed ridiculous.
Finally, some of the ideas that were given to the candidates were: to lower the number of administrative staff. There are many people that work in administrative issues but they are not qualified to work there; the parties to be more prepared for the elections. In the last minutes the parties changed the names of the candidates; to deal with the water supply; new job creations; to create a new environment for small and medium enterprises.