PRISTINA, Kosovo: It is perhaps a sign of the changes under way in this breakaway province of Serbia that Memli Krasniqi, Kosovo's most famous rap star, is trading in his baggy jeans for a pinstripe suit, and his anti-establishment lyrics for a political career.

Krasniqi, 27, who is running in Kosovo parliamentary elections, which are being held Saturday, used to rap about the horrors of ethnic cleansing, communal violence and his irritation with the international community. But today, the visceral frustration of his songs is being directed at his own government, which he accuses of failing Kosovo in the eight years since the territory came under United Nations protection and the last NATO bomb fell over Pristina.

"We've waited so long for freedom, but somehow I don't feel free," Krasniqi raps in a recent song. "Something's not right; I see the same since eight years. The offices are full of crooks that sell lies to us. And in the back of the people fill their pockets full."

The soft-spoken Krasniqi, who managed to take a break from the recording studio to study at the London School of Economics, says he is just as concerned about Kosovo's 60 percent unemployment rate and its rampant corruption as he is about Kosovo's aspiration for independence - the one issue upon which all the ethnic Albanian parties here agree.

"My biggest frustration is with the incompetence of our government," he said on a recent day at a hip café in Pristina, as tables of young fans pointed at him and stared. "It's a joke. More than 40 percent of Kosovars are living in poverty. There are constant power cuts. The ministry of trade is run by a historian. And the government recently spent €1.7 million to refurbish a boulevard in Pristina with marble sidewalks."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/15/europe/kosovo.php

Labels: Kosova, Parliament

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