OSCE Mission takes municipal debates to Kosovo-wide TV audience

The stage is set, the sound check is finished, the TV cameras are ready to roll. The producer turns to the audience and asks everyone to turn off their mobile phones. "If you have any questions you would like the mayor to answer, write them down on the paper provided and pass them to us," he says and signals for the show to start.

Faik Ispahiu, a large and vocal man in his mid-thirties, is the executive producer of the TV show Jeta në Kosovë (Life in Kosovo). Since 2005, he and his crew, all members of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), a regional media organization, have produced over 220 TV debates on topics that other media tend to avoid.

"We cover a variety of issues - trafficking, same-sex couples, corruption and mismanagement of public funds," Faik says. He and the crew are currently on the road producing the municipal debates, which are sponsored by the OSCE Mission in Kosovo.

As Nikola Gaon, the Mission's Public Affairs Officer, explains: "These televised debates are a follow-up to the pre-election mayoral debates we produced with BIRN in November and December last year."

In 2007, Kosovo voters elected their municipal mayors for the first time through a two-round direct election, which was also debated on TV.

Informing voters

"The purpose of the debates we produced back then was to inform voters about mayoral candidates' plans and platforms in the days leading up to the elections," says Jeta Xharra, the presenter of Jeta në Kosovë (the title of the show is a pun on her name) and a Director of BIRN Kosovo.

The current series of municipal debates aims to review the situation in municipalities and to see how far the mayors have got with implementing their pre-election promises.

"By putting these kinds of debates on TV, we are helping to involve far bigger numbers of people in the discussion than one could ever do with town-hall meetings," says Jeta, quoting an audience survey which showed that more than half a million Kosovo inhabitants followed the pre-election debates, while over 13,000 attended the recording of the shows.

Mayors in the hot seat

On 23 September, the Mayor of Viti/Vitina, Nexhmedin Arifi, was one of the first to occupy the "hot seat" opposite Jeta in an improvised studio set on the stage of the municipal culture house, in front of a live audience of some 450 people.

Packing the front row were other debate participants, including members of the opposition parties from the municipal assembly, local NGOs and the media, as well as the staff of the OSCE municipal team covering Viti/Vitina.

To kick off the debate, the agenda was set by showing Mayor Arifi's pre-election promises, followed by an investigative report about the work of the municipal administration, on a TV screen set up on stage between Jeta and the Mayor.

The report and subsequent discussion showed that the main concerns of Viti/Vitina inhabitants include misuse of municipal assets such as vehicles; failure to adopt the municipal statute, which has created a big hole in the legal framework and the hiring of allegedly incompetent staff. A positive assessment was given to the municipal administration on how it handles service requests.

Debating things in the open

One young woman who came to see the recording said it was good to bring things out in the open. "People often talk about the problems in our municipality, but no one has ever been publicly called upon to answer allegations. I am glad that we are now starting to talk about what bothers us in an open discussion," she said.

According to Nikola Gaon, the Mission decided to fund the pre- and post-election debates to help promote transparency and accountability in the work of municipal governments and support public discourse.

The debates are currently airing on primetime TV every Thursday on Kosovo's public broadcaster, RTK. By the end of 2008, 20 municipalities will have hosted debates, while another seven will be produced in the first few months of next year.

"I think we will reach a similar-sized audience as we did with the pre-election debate," says Jeta.

"But there is one thing I regret, and that is that we are not able to produce debates in all 30 Kosovo municipalities," she adds, referring to the fact that the three northern municipalities with a Serb majority population boycotted the 2007 election.

"We hope that once the political circumstances change we will be able to go up north as well," she concludes.