From: Marlin Muça
Crime in Politics Indicates Ideological Poverty

For a long time now the political parties in Albania have turned from ideological unions into unions of interests, which no longer belong to society but to a small group of people with political, economic, and in our case also criminal power. In fact, this phenomenon has occurred in the majority of Western democracies, while within Albanian political there is a struggle both about political interests (something that is completely normal in a political structure) and criminal interests that are used for person and electoral aims.

As long as crime is a complement in a political party, its self-cleaning only happens when a scandal becomes public, and it is impossible not to denounce it. It is obvious in our country, just like in other country with dubious democratic standards, that scandals and democracy are intimate connected, but what passes for a denunciation is not a legal verdict, but political fate. The intensity of such an attack does not drown out the efforts of the prosecution.

In our political parties there exists the practice of a certificate of good conduct, which has proven to be no solution to the problem of the criminalization of the parties and the Parliament. It is illogical to think that the Albanian political parties would establish structures to analyze the cause of their electoral defeat, while they don’t give a definitive solution to the problem of criminal high up in the party, which from the hallways of the party naturally jump into the seats of parliament. This makes you think that party leaders may have a pathological need crime, because this path often trotted by incriminated people continues to be open.

Thus the legal investigation of these people has become nearly impossible. They are individuals who hide their links with crime through political support and political pressure on the judicial system. Their accusation would cause rumors in the media and political accusations, delegitimizing the work of the judiciary by confronting it with the prejudices of militants.

The pruning of these people from the political scene would not only give a completely new image to politics, but would also put the judiciary in a more comfortable position, far away from party pressures and popular prejudices. The parties cannot accomplish this type of filtering. They don’t because they don’t want to. They feel insecure in the face of the citizens, with a civilized and European politics as their sole idea. We are living in an epoch where reason has died.