Prime Minister Edi Rama delivered his speech at the Congress of the Socialist Party where he spoke about the positions on justice reform.
“Today there are many attempts to show the first results of this reform as an imposed product, imported from the USA and the EU, even to show them as evidence of the greedy capture by all the decision-making political forces of this country from our strategic allies. There is nothing more untrue than this and let whoever wants to think whatever they want, but justice reform without the Socialist Party and our victory in 2013, no Anglo-American or Euro-Westerner could do in Albania.
The American Embassy and the European delegation did not come to Albania in 2013. They were here since Albania was freed from the clutches of the dictatorship and the need for a democratic justice in Albania was not discovered by either the Europeans or the Anglo-Americans in 2016, but when we moved to Parliament the historic change package of the constitutional course of justice in this country.
On the other hand, if the justice reform was a mandatory export product for the countries that want to join the European Union, then the EU and the USA would have exported it to other countries in the region. There are at least two other NATO countries in the Balkans, plus another country that is not NATO, but is totally pro-American and pro-Western, which is Kosovo. Why haven’t they imported it since it’s so easy for them to bring the reform by plane?
While those countries, including Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, they show them Albania. They say, take an example of how you should do the reform in justice. They say, take the example of how the justice system is cleansed of corrupt judges and prosecutors. They say, take an example of how a comprehensive organization of justice is done. Therefore, those who say the opposite, do it from the position of the opponent of the Socialist Party or do it from the position of the Albanian who hardly recognizes Albanians and others the credit for a good job. Have you noticed? Every good work we do, “time brought”. Everything that goes wrong, “it’s wrong because we did it”. I agree with the second, but I disagree with the first.
Time did not bring this transformation, but the Socialist Party of Albania and the Socialist Party of Society brought it, not America nor Europe, but the Albanian people brought it in 2013 and since the Albanian people are the people that if there was a world championship for politics they would win the world cup and they have an unerring instinct, not only gave us their vote in 2013 but when we asked them again in 2017 and told them, “give us the power to govern without others in our laps, because otherwise we will not move this process forward”. That we passed the constitutional amendments in 2016 and the package that was needed for the entire basic legal corpus that’s why it was taken hostage for almost 3 years in the Parliament.
I underline it more to tell the Albanians, we are able to do all the things we dream of with our eyes open and we don’t have to wait for others to do it for us and here, we did that too.
We definitely did not do it alone and definitely nothing is done alone in this world, but we are able to make Albania with allies, friends and partners at a level that Albania has never had, so before you say how much America did us good, how good Europe did us, lets say: how interesting, we can finish something we enter. As far as history is concerned, history has no other name for this merit than the Socialist Party.
However, having said all this, the big problem today, is what we should do more and much better to bring as close as possible to the day when justice in Albania will be complete, fair justice, independent justice , capable and honest justice with all Albanians and for all Albanians.
Everything that is happening today with the investigation, indictment or criminal punishment of a number of high-profile individuals at the central level of politics, is only the awakening of a spirit of justice that has been dormant for more than 100 years in a coma in the underground of the Albanian state, but it is not the European justice that we want for Albania and for our children. This awakening has only one reason: The transition of our power as the largest political force in the country, which owns the executive power and leads the way of building the state of law to a new structure that was born from the reform in justice and which consists of a special prosecution body, SPAK (Special Prosecutors Office”, and a special trial body, GJKKO (Special Court against corruption and organized crime. It took several years for this establishment to extend its independent hands to the power of politics and begin to bring before the law individuals who could not even be imagined to ever be touched by justice, since 1912 and this is definitely an absolute necessity to move forward on the path of building European justice and strengthening good governance. We will therefore continue to unconditionally support this newborn creature. In a person’s life, every year has a special weight, while in the process of democratic state building, a year is just one day and nothing more, and only a few days are not enough to pass from a century-old phase without freedom, without democracy, first of all without the rule of law, to a phase of the functioning of the rule of law like a punctual clock.
Imagine the other Prosecutor’s Offices, imagine the other Courts in what condition they are, I don’t want to take time with this, but we must think seriously about what we must do for justice to increase its professionalism. European justice is always, in every case, a guarantor of the rule of law, it is a guarantor of the freedoms and constitutional rights of every individual. This is the Republic of Albania, not the republic of prosecutors or judges who are, without question, an independent power from the Parliament and the government, but they are not the only independent power of this Republic, which also has two powers other independent bodies that do not depend on the judicial power in their decision-making, nor are they accountable to the judicial power for the exercise of their constitutional and legal powers.
This is how European justice works and this is the panorama of the future for which we must all work together, institutionally, so that the new justice becomes a European justice throughout the territory,
that it is not enough for one individual, another and another to go before the law even though they have a political costume, but it is necessary that every individual who goes to the doors of the Prosecutor’s Office and the Courts in all the 28 thousand square kilometers of Albania, be guaranteed that his right is neither sold nor bought.
For two years there has been discussions of a new group of proposals for changes to the reform laws in justice, and this new group of proposals does not come from us, it comes from the justice system itself.
It started first for some rational interventions related to SPAK and international missions for assistance and monitoring and then it was chosen. It has been expanded with proposals from all institutions of the justice system. I do not regret at all that this ruling majority has approved a salary increase in the parliament, did you hear the Minister of Justice. 200 and 300% for prosecutors and judges. While the increase in salaries for the armed forces, the increase in salaries for police officers, the increase in salaries for teachers, the increase in salaries for nurses, the increase in salaries for doctors, the increase in salaries for all employees is far from that.
If we, fortunately, have started to approach the high level of salaries in the region, you know that the prosecutors and judges of Albania have the absolute highest salaries in the region, with a difference from the presidents of the region.
We, today, must recognize and must take responsibility for the support and coordination of this major process by the Assembly, the commissions and structures specially set up near the Assembly, just as we must recognize and take responsibility for addressing the need for a strategy of new to increase the flow in the School of Magistracy. Vacancies to be filled in the fastest possible time in the system. To maintain the quality and professionalism without question, but also for the way to increase the speed in the investigation and judgment of cases that have not been investigated and judged for years and are endless cases of families, endless cases of individuals, endless cases of Albanian citizens who have the right theirs to get answers and get their right.
Increasing access to justice, guaranteeing standards for a proper legal process. The best implementation of all that is the provisions of the reform laws.
But all these are not like school, hospital, road projects. They are not even like the problems of the functioning of the dependent agencies of the government, for which another effort is needed that brings together the three independent powers. It brings them together, bringing together a very large number of institutions that are dependent on them, respecting the independence of each one. We must be up to this challenge, which is very serious, because despite the construction of a new legal framework, new architecture of the justice system and, in fact, the establishment of a new system from scratch, the fundamental factor for the success of this reform is the healthy nourishment of a spirit and a European state mentality.
The state mentality requires the awareness of all the leaders of the institutions of all these powers and the leaders of all levels in these institutions in the first place that independent powers are not independent republics. And the Republic of Albania is not a federation among those three, but the Republic of Albania is the reason, it is the goal, it is the mission why these powers exist.
The role of the Assembly in the process of implementing the reform is defined, the constitutional provisions, it is regulated in the laws, but if you ask yourself what has changed in the traditional practice of the assembly in relation to this new strategic role that the assembly is the center of gravity, it is not the government, it is the assembly. Work on this change should start one hour before us. But, as I said on at the beginning, on the other hand, we will not have a European justice and a European good governance if we do not dare to break the framework of gradual progress through innovation not only gradually and not simply in terms of technology, but in the whole philosophy of the institutions’ approach to the very idea of progress.
And we must work every day with the awareness that the fight against corruption cannot be done exclusively by justice, but also by good governance, which must be modernized, and the latter must in no way be seized by us with all the power of our desire to to increase the speed of progress, the new opportunity, the opportunity of this historical moment for the entire human society that is technology and artificial intelligence.
The fight against corruption and the increase in the quality of democratic institutions requires a justice that punishes the wrongdoers clothed in power, it also requires the modernization of the state through the creation and continuous training of the institution’s operating systems.
The Socialist Party aims to give you the privilege to sit in the chair to serve its publicly announced goals and massively voted by Albanians.
While to hold that chair with dignity and success, it is your duty, it is your responsibility and it is your honor, but parallel to this and regardless of how many corrupt individuals will be punished by the new justice today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, corruption will continue remain a significant problem in Albania, as long as the modernization of the state’s operating systems, as well as the quality of the decision-making processes, will not reach the level of the critical mass of the transformation. If we lived in another time, this work could take us 50 years, but the time we live in has given us an opportunity that no human generation has imagined. The blessing of digital technology and now and artificial intelligence,” said Prime Minister Edi Rama.
