In a press conference following his dismissal by Prime Minister Edi Rama, former Minister of Justice Ylli Manjani suggested that his declarations against cannabis cultivation and trafficking, the inaction of the police in the Klement Balili case, and the fact that he didn’t clear his interviews with Prime Minister Rama’s Director of Communications, Endri Fuga.
Manjani’s interview with journalist Sokol Balla is generally believed to have accelerated his departure from Rama’s government. In the interview, he qualified the widespread cultivation and trafficking of cannabis as “very serious problem,” that needs to be “torn from the earth and minds of the Albanian.” Opposing Minister of Interior Affairs Saimir Tahiri’s view that the state had mostly been successful in eradicating cannabis cultivation from Albania, the former Minister of Justice affirmed that “the phenomenon exists and exists in a frightening manner.” He attributed the success of cannabis cultivation to the fact that workers’ pay is relatively good, while unemployment remains high.
Manjani also defended himself against allegations that he would not have acted to arrest drug baron Klement Balili. In several statements from December 2016, he referred to the fact that “the Minister of Justice is neither prosecutor, nor judge, nor police officer! In other words those whose task it is to arrest and judge Klement Balili and any else better do so!” He also declared that “for seven months I have publicly stated this concern.” Meanwhile, the Albanian police and prosecution only seemed to come in action after former CIA director John Brennan paid a visit to Tirana. “I don’t direct the State Police,” Manjani later said in January, again implying Minister Tahiri.
Finally, the former Minister of Justice had frequently addressed the atmosphere within the Council of Ministers, expressing his frustration that he “proposed several draft laws,” which didn’t pass, and questioning Prime Minister Rama’s move to include the PDIU in the government coalition, which was interpreted as an attempt to weaken the position of the LSI: “We won the elections with [former PS deputy] Ben Blushi, not with [PDIU leader] Shpëtim Idrizi. He also expressed is disbelief that “a minister should take the permission of [Director of Communications] Endri Fuga to give an interview.” Apparently that’s what he didn’t do last week, and it cost him his job.
