The republic intoxicated by the cannabis fumes

The republic intoxicated by the cannabis fumes
By Sonila Meço

This article has been written for Albanian Free Press newspaper and www.afp.al

In the Far East they say that “vision without action is like dreaming in broad daylight, but action without vision is a nightmare”. The era that we’re living in today is like a long nightmare, the end of which could ‘kill’ someone’s dream, but also ‘execute’ a republic.

If we read news stories that belong to 15, 10 or 5 years ago, the key words that are used are the same. The problems are similar: the connection that exists between the abuse of power, non application of the law, entering agreements which violate the Constitution and disappointment of the people, is so stubborn that one may think that the entire system that we have built these years is nothing else but a perpetuate cycle of our patience toward our decision makers. And there is no doubt that this type of democracy that we have, with partial freedom according to Freedom House, generates frequent gridlocks, testifying to the enthusiasm of the simple voter to go from one crisis to another. This is a tragic optimism of our kind, because it preserves an adequate number of voters who legitimize a system of stakeholders who take turns in power and a system which generates mass migration, mainly affecting ‘non stake holders’.

The most essential question is: how much security, equality and wellbeing have we today, after so many years of democracy?  And once you try and find an answer to this question, you encounter events which are repeated every two or four years and you remember that those that you have voted and those you haven’t voted, feel more confident and richer, enough to have their house in the city, mountain or beach.

Thus, you’re sufficiently trained to know that elections in Albania are rigged. The fate of your vote is in the hands of dirty money and gangsters. It’s not the majority, but a group of traffickers, entrepreneurs, builders, publishers, lobbyists, criminals without an ideology, who control power in this country. Regardless of how you vote, it doesn’t change anything for you.

Here’s the proof for this: elections in this country are neither fair nor free. The vote is purchased with dirty money. Elections are controlled by politics. Constitution is not the state’s most important document, because it is ignored, it is shrunk and enlarged based on the will of those who are in power and now, foreigners, who claim that they love Albania more than Albanians do. Powers are not balanced. Justice doesn’t punish wrongdoers. Referendums are not respected and they are not used as democratic means for decision making. Reforms are made through political bargaining, avoiding sovereignty. Political deals seem to overlap Constitution. Parliament takes anti-constitutional decisions. Heads of independent institutions continue to remain in office without a mandate and other are expected to be added to this list, starting with the President of the country. Ambassadors ‘blackmail’ the Prosecution. The political class targets ambassadors. Media are shut down, censored or self censored. Economy depends on cannabis. An electoral constituency remains without representation in Parliament, because all representatives have criminal records. Thus, there are elections in the country, but the only purpose that they serve is to legitimize this republic intoxicated by the smoke of cannabis. Transition has become more natural to us than a process would turn democracy and the rule of law from a definition to reality.

But this time, more than the reproduction of the crisis, what astonishes us the most are the records in the behavior of domestic and foreign decision makers, who in an attempt to transform totalitarism into a functional democracy, produced in fact a monster:

- A monster which allows its Constitution to be touched, leaving the implementation of the judicial reform in the hands of some foreign technocrats, for the sake of a major Judicial Reform, which in practice cannot be applied and for which we don’t know if the one in power today would still vote it if his opponent was in power. Would Rama vote it if he knew that he wouldn’t be in power tomorrow? Laws must be drafted by those who do not know if tomorrow they will be ‘kings’ or slaves’.

- A monster where anyone accuses everyone, where the opposition claims that government officials are not punished and once it comes in power, it has no plans on how to make a reform in a rotten judicial system, but along the way it drafts, through non transparent ways, with suspicious people and inapplicable formula, a reform, the implementation of which starts with anti-constitutional processes.  Starting with the letters sent by the Minister of Justice to Commissioner Hahn, where he points out that there is no constitutional basis for the creation of the International Monitoring Operation, moving on with the lack of powers by the General Secretary of the Council of Ministers who announced that IMO should start to be operational as soon as possible (the board will have a key role in advising Parliament about the appointments in the Independent Commission of Qualification, Appeal College and Public Commissioners, who will conduct the voting process).  Parliament itself made anti-constitutional decisions to return the lists with the candidates for the Vetting institutions back to the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman in this case breaks the law, although the mandate for the head of this institution has expired. The Parliamentary Law Committee cancelled the process for the nominations of candidates for this post. Although procedures were conducted in compliance with the law, their cancellation was uncommon and unjustified. But let us continue with the lack of constitutionality that accompanied the start of the implementation of the Judicial Reform. The Constitution doesn’t  allow the postponement of deadlines and even less, the adding of new candidates in the list of candidates for the Vetting institutions.

However, the Judicial Reform is not a guarantee in fighting corruption or guaranteeing application of the law by politician, because even when there’s a complete legislation, the new institutions that are formed use different forms to mine processes. And the examples with our democratic charade are endless.  This is no longer a case of sophisticates laws or mechanisms for the Vetting process, but a missing mentality and tradition to hold politicians accountable.  Changing the values of a society needs more than this. We need to see if the law on Decriminalization distanced politics from the phenomenon. We saw ministers alongside people who were accused and we saw a public discourse by decision makers which justified the behavior of people with criminal records in parliament or as part of the local government authorities.

- A monster, which although it suffers electoral rigging in every election, it is still not able to build an electoral reform.  And this leads to a zeitnot which produces a destabilizing situation, because the elections will either be held without the opposition, they will either be postponed or once again, a part of the population will be mobilized against the other, to sublimate decisions in the name of the people, when power is in danger. And if elections are held with the current system, it once again deforms the will of the people, reproducing another crisis.

Perhaps, to undo the monster that the state has turned into, it would have been better to let the people vote for the judicial reform in a referendum, in order not to impose laws without consensus or anti-constitutional acts since the very start of their application.  With pending causes and with enemies who are challenging him, today, the Prime Minister must make a decision. In these four years, Rama has been the center of gravity. Despite the fact that it was a joint government, the reforms were perceived as a personal effort to install the rule of law. This endeavor saw the restriction of the powers of the president, it saw laws that were adopted without the consensus of the opposition, thanks to a big parliamentary majority. Political competition within the party was “killed”, factions were removed and efforts were made to eliminate the joint government ally with ad hoc formulas on the pretext of the judicial reform. A lot was invested in a strong PR machinery to build the idea of a regional leader.

This time, the republic intoxicated by the smoke of cannabis has entered a serious crisis, where neither the Constitution, nor consensus or the international community can offer a solution.

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