War of information as a “new” political war!

By Alfred Peza

At the moment, we’re seeing a tendency building up and this tendency is becoming increasingly concerning in one aspect; it regards information which circulates on the media and which were made public by law enforcement agencies which have a job to preserve their confidentiality. It seems that part of this simple tendency are not only two political sides, which fight against each other, like they do in every normal liberal democracy. But, it seems that there are also other players which feed these sides, two extremes and two poles of the political arena, through the intermediacy of the media, by making legal issues and constitutional institutions an extension of politics through other means.

I decided to write this article after I saw the last press conference of the leader of the Democratic Party, Lulzim Basha, who accused State Police of tipping off three former senior police officials that they were going to be arrested. It’s a fact that these three officials could not be arrested. It was said that they were not in their homes at the time of the police raid.

Never in my experience as a journalist, had I ever encountered such a weird fact. Every step which was taken, every order which was given, every action that was being carried out, was reported in real time by all the media.

From what I know, State Police neither denied, nor confirmed this accusation. By being a depoliticized institution, either it didn’t want to prompt debates with the leader of the opposition, or it didn’t want to take a stance. The meeting of the heads of the Prosecution of Serious Crimes and Internal Affairs at the ministry of Interior and the meeting of the minister of Interior, Fatmir Xhafaj with his subordinates about the failure of the arrest operation, shows that there’s a concern and a serious problem amidst all of this.

This is not the first time where there’s leak of information and where decisions, cases or details which should at least be confidential, have been made public. But this tendency became more evident when Parliament of Albania was asked to give its authorization for the arrest of the former minister of Interior, Saimir Tahiri. This whole story was accompanied by registered conversations which became public, or names which were mentioned directly or indirectly, sometimes in online media, sometimes in traditional media, sometimes in newspapers and sometimes in political shows during the evening.

Following the arrest of the businessman Orest Sota with 863 thousand euros in his car, where two sailing licenses belonging to Tahiri, were found, this tendency of making everything public, turned into a national thing. Almost everyone was involved in this game, in an attempt to unfold everything they could, including true details, partially true, untrue and fantasies until everything “degenerated” in a case of investigation, judgment and collective debates. This put a big question mark on the reliability of the state, constitutional and law enforcement institutions and on the political class itself.

In these 27 years of democracy, I don’t recall any other case having prompted so much debate like the so called “Tahiri case”, “Habilaj case”, “Sota case” or the “Case of the three police officials”. There’s only one thing in all of this. It relates to the use of the war of information for political purposes.

War of information is as old as the world, as old as information and as old as politics. It is not something new and this is what worries us. We’re not talking about theories or common knowledge. The real concern relates to the intentional (mis) use of classified information for a political war and for personal gains. All of this is taking place in breach of the law and the Constitution from law enforcement agencies.

What concerns us more in all of this breach of legal ethics and code of professional and institutional communication, is that this whole thing has been made in the open, without the slightest concern that there could ever be any consequences out of this. One thing is certain: the image of the different powers, the reliability of the state and its institutions and the professional standard of those employees who have a duty to preserve information, have really been damaged. The political class, especially the opposition, is the one which used this story and will continue to use it in the days to come. The opposition may see some benefits in the short term, but one thing is sure: this precedent can even be repeated in the future and it could backfire to it when it comes to power. The biggest winner here is traditional media and online media, journalists and all of those who earn their living by exchanging information in social networks.

Let us be clear on the fact that this concern relating to a flagrant misuse of information from those who have a duty and are paid to preserve it, have no connection whatsoever with the right of media and the opposition to oppose the majority and the government.

Note: The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Albanian Free Press’ editorial policy