Ramadan Gashi

Ramadan Gashi (born 15 April 1958) is a politician in Kosovo. He was the mayor of Skenderaj from 1999 to 2007 and a member of the Assembly of Kosovo from 2008 to 2011. During his time as an elected official, Gashi was a member of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK).

He is not to be confused with a Kosovan diplomat of the same name.

Early life and career

Gashi was born to a Kosovo Albanian family in the village of Kryshec in Skenderaj, in what was then the Autonomous Region of Kosovo and Metohija in the People's Republic of Serbia, Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. He studied at the University of Pristina Faculty of Law and holds a master's degree in law. Prior to the 1998-99 Kosovo War, he was involved in civic organizations such as the Council for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms in Skenderaj.

Politician

Mayor of Skenderaj (1999–2007)

After the end of the Kosovo War in 1999, Gashi became the leader of Skenderaj's municipal assembly; this position was at the time equivalent to mayor. The PDK was the dominant power in Kosovo's Drenica region in this period, with an August 2000 report in the Christian Science Monitor indicating that former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) soldiers affiliated with the party exercised "virtual complete control" in Skenderaj. The rival Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) complained that its members were threatened with violence; Gashi dismissed the charge as "lies and propaganda," saying, "We don't need to threaten any other parties."

The PDK won a landslide victory in Skenderaj in the 2000 Kosovan local elections, taking twenty-seven of thirty-one seats. Gashi led the PDK's electoral list and was confirmed afterward for a full term as mayor. In July 2002, he was elected as a member of the PDK's steering council.

He led the PDK to another overwhelming victory in Skenderaj in the 2002 local elections and continued in office as mayor. He did not seek re-election at the local level in 2007.

Parliamentarian (2008–11)

Gashi appeared in the forty-first position on the PDK's list in the 2007 Kosovan parliamentary election. Parliamentary elections in Kosovo are held under open list proportional representation, and he finished in thirty-third place among the party's candidates. The list won thirty-seven seats. Due to a requirement that one-third of its mandates be reserved for female candidates, he was not immediately elected; he was, however, ranked second to enter the assembly as a replacement member. As the PDK joined a coalition government after the election and some of its parliamentarians soon resigned to take ministerial positions, Gashi was able to enter the assembly on the week of its convocation in January 2008. The following month, the assembly membership and Kosovo's political leadership unilaterally declared independence as the Republic of Kosovo. Gashi served on the assembly committee on legislation and the judiciary and was a member of other ad hoc committees, including one dealing with laws arising from the Ahtisaari Plan.

He finished in fifty-ninth place among the PDK's candidates in the 2010 assembly election; the list won thirty-four seats, and he was not re-elected. The PDK won the election and remained in government.

Since 2011

In May 2012, Gashi was appointed as a deputy justice minister in the Republic of Kosovo government. He was removed from office a month later, when the newspaper Koha Ditore reported that there was an indictment against him for abuse of office pertaining to his time as mayor of Skenderaj. He has not returned to active political life since this time.

Gashi has worked as executive director of the Republic of Kosovo's Free Legal Aid Agency. He supported Skenderaj mayor Bekim Jashari's unsuccessful bid for re-election in the 2021 Kosovan local elections.