In June 2007, a group of NGOs coming from different parts of Kosovo came together to initiate a coalition of civil society organizations called “Civil Society for a Clean Parliament”. In a nutshell, the idea behind the project was to create a parliament free of corruption, organized crime, and any other illegal activities, by researching the background of each candidate for deputy at the central parliament coming from the six bigger Kosovar political parties, in order to reveal their possible involvement in illegal activities such as corruption, organized crime, tax evasion, nepotism, etc.
In June 2007, a group of NGOs coming from different parts of Kosovo came together to initiate a coalition of civil society organizations called “Civil Society for a Clean Parliament” (hereinafter: coalition). This idea had been implemented firstly in Romania in 2004, thus seeing the positive effects it had there a number of Kosovar NGOs decided to initiate something similar in Kosovo.
Aware of the importance of the civil society engagement in calling for changes in governance processes and affect that civil society can have on informing and engaging the society in elections, the Kosova Foundation for Open Society, through East-East: Partnership Beyond Borders program, provided support to the coalition of NGOs, which under the leadership of the Organization for Democracy, Anticorruption and Dignity - ÇOHU!, engaged in replicating the Romanian experience and inform and guide the Kosovar voters towards election of a Clean Parliament. In a nutshell, the idea behind the project was to create a parliament free of corruption, organized crime, and any other illegal activities, by researching the background of each candidate for deputy at the central parliament coming from the six bigger Kosovar political parties, in order to reveal their possible involvement in illegal activities such as corruption, organized crime, tax evasion, nepotism, etc. A list of criteria was developed by the coalition against which to measure the “cleanness” of the candidates for deputy seats. In August the coalition started identifying journalists with experience in covering political issues and different affairs who would start researching the background of candidates for deputy. In order to be as comprehensive and to cover Kosovo as a whole as much as possible, the coalition hired local journalists coming from different regions of Kosovo who would cover candidates coming from their respective region. This was also enabled due to the structure of the coalition itself, because the NGOs came from different regions of Kosovo thus it made the work much easier and smoother.
By August the journalists were already researching, and by the end of September they had finished the research. In order to make sure that all the data gathered is sufficiently well researched and to filter the information, the coalition created an independent Review Board. This board reviewed and filtered the information on the candidates during the first half of October, where they actually came up with recommendations on whether a certain candidate needs to be further researched, or that it be removed completely from the list. Due to the fact that there was a need to further research some candidates and to complement information gathered on the ground, the coalition hired a number of other journalists who were based in Prishtina which assisted the Review Board in their work.
Preliminary reports were sent to political parties by mid October, although the work had not been completely finished. The time of elections in Kosovo was scheduled somehow hurriedly and unexpectedly to the surprise of everyone. This made the work harder for the coalition and for political parties, thus preliminary reports were sent to the latter to give them more time to contest the findings. Two weeks before reports were published, final reports were sent to political parties. On November 4
th the coalition “Civil Society for a Clean Parliament” published the lists of unfit candidates in a press conference. In the last three days of election campaign, the coalition distributed 50,000 brochures with the names of unfit candidates, covering all major areas in Kosovo.
