Politics & Power Quote by Ibrahim Rugova

Rugova’s line is doing the kind of quiet statecraft that matters most when a state is not yet fully a state. He frames “political problems” and “economical problems” as inseparable, but the real move is the direction of travel: politics comes first, economy follows. In other words, sovereignty and legitimacy are not abstract ideals; they are prerequisites for jobs, trade, investment, and functioning institutions. For a leader operating in Kosovo’s contested reality of the 1990s into the early 2000s, that’s not theory. It’s a survival blueprint.

The phrasing is deliberately plain, almost procedural: “With the help of politics, we will open the way.” That modesty is strategic. It avoids revolutionary bravado and instead sells governance as infrastructure-building. He’s telling citizens (and foreign backers listening closely) that the “newly elected government” has a program, and that program links bread-and-butter needs to diplomatic and constitutional work. The subtext: don’t dismiss negotiations, recognition, or institution-building as elite obsessions; they are the gateway to salaries being paid, borders being workable, and the economy being something more than remittances and emergency aid.

It also signals a philosophy associated with Rugova’s reputation for restraint: politics as a tool to de-escalate and formalize, not to inflame. The economy becomes the argument for patience. If you want normal life, he implies, you must first win the conditions for normal life.