Ignoring the High Prosecutorial Council’s (KLP) warning yesterday that “public declarations” of the government concerning judiciary processes “could prejudice [their] progress and conclusion,” Prime Minister Edi Rama has today doubled down in his attack on the judiciary.
During an explosive speech in Parliament Rama coined the acronym “KÇK” (kap ça të kapësh, “grab what you can grab”) to describe a supposed criminal organization consisting of “prosecutors and judges who know they won’t pass the vetting.” The acronym KÇK is reminiscent of several other justice reform acronyms, such as KPK and KLP.
Rama declared:
I am speaking about a criminal organization with Constitutional immunity, with legal immunity, about the criminal organization of super-corrupt prosecutors and judges who know that they won’t pass the vetting and work the whole day to grab what they can grab [kap ça të kapësh]. About them I’m talking.
And that case [from Durrës] that I brought here is one of hundreds of cases that happened regularly. And this is not to be ridiculed or ironized, because he [Liridon Pula] indeed was Director of the Cadaster, a Director of the Cadaster that doesn’t bow to crime. Because fortunately there are lot like him. […]
Meanwhile, independent from what we’re doing etc. etc. and what is said in the law, the prosecutors and judges of this country start the day by robbing, they start the day with abuse, they start the day humiliating people that have voted in this country that come to us in Parliament. […]
I am not quite capable of understanding well how European Conventions function, but I am sufficiently shocked by what is happening daily to people. […]
That’s why I am saying it is time for us to take an extreme measure. A measure as extreme as the daily activities of those criminals. Criminals in the prosecution offices, criminals in the courts, and criminals on the street are together and do the same thing. […]
The time has come for us to raise the stakes and to oppose with the wildest force the KÇK and the street trash. […] The time has come to deal the toughest and most extreme blow to all who on the streets want to be distinguished from everyone else because they have the force of lawlessness and the gloomy biography of the criminal world.
As I explained before, Rama’s insistent attacks and pressure on the judiciary, including the vetting institutions, is a serious threat to one of the main aims of the justice reform, namely the establishment of an independent judiciary outside the influence of politics. Rama’s statements accomplish precisely the opposite.
