With the boycott of the elections by the opposition, it is basically a given that the PS will secure at least two-thirds of the seats in the next parliament – 84 deputies – a majority that is enough to pass any type of law, and possibly even more than 93 seats, which will open up the way to unilaterally changing the Constitution. No matter how much better the LSI or other parties will perform in the elections, this spectacular result of the PS is basically inevitable.
Leaving aside romantic democratic terms, the political situation in the country after the elections of June 18 will be a de facto autocracy. The next prime minister will have full control over the entire governmental apparatus in the country and legally his power will be practically unlimited.
What is even more disconcerting is the fact that Prime Minister Rama has shown during his first mandate that he has little respect and consideration for institutions and laws, and this attitude will turn Albania after June 18 into an absolute autocracy.
Perhaps the Prime Minister already gave us a taste of this new political system when he stated in his weekly monologue on Sunday:
The Albania that we have will enter a new political, economic, and social cycle. […] Politics itself will change, will be adapted with now the new conditions of the new cycle, will take on a new form and content.
The main justification that Edi Rama is using to impose this new regime on the country is the cliche of vetting. Yesterday the Prime Minister emphasized that the new Parliament – that is, the new absolute majority under his control – will unblock the vetting, thus opening the way to becoming an EU member state.
Immediately after the formation of the new government, the new Parliament, without the PD, will unblock the vetting with the first vote of the next legislature. […] The judicial reform, voting the vetting will decide the European fate of Albania.
Let’s ignore the false declaration that implementing the judicial reform will immediately lead to accession negotiations with the EU and the other false claim implied in this declaration that EU membership will take little time, when it is quite certain that the accession process will take at least ten more years.
Let’s stick for a moment with the vetting, the heavy artillery that Edi Rama is using to justify, basically, the destruction of the democratic process in the country.
The core of the Prime Minister’s argument is that getting rid of the opposition and securing absolute power is something very good for Albania, better even than democracy itself, because it will bring vetting to Albania and save Albania from crime and corruption.
But what will it really bring?
As we explained here, vetting is a process in which the capabilities of prosecutors and judges are verified by commissions that have been determined in advance. The members of the commissions that will perform the vetting will be elected by two parliamentary ad-hoc committees. One of those committees will have 12, and the other 6 members, with half of each of them nominated by the majority, and the other half by the opposition.
After the next elections, the PS will have an overwhelming majority in Parliament, while the few seats for the opposition will be most probably go to the LSI and PDIU. This means that the members of the vetting commissions will be basically “nominated” by Edi Rama and Ilir Meta, with maybe a member chosen by Shpëtim Idrizi thrown in.
In any case it seems that most of the “opposition” members will be LSI deputies, which will be enough to create, together with the members of the PS, a majority within the parliamentary ad-hoc committees. This means that after the elections the entire vetting process will be in the hands of Rama and Meta.
In other words, Edi Rama basically tells the Albanian citizens to sacrifice pluralism and give him absolute power, because he and Ilir Meta will clean the justice system of corrupt judges, and afterward the honorable judges selected by Rama and Meta will imprison corrupted politicians and government officials.
Precisely who are these corrupted politicians that will be imprisoned has been made clear by Prime Minister Rama: not himself, not Ilir Meta, not Saimir Tahiri, not Damian Gjiknuri, not Ilir Beqaj, not the directors of the taxes, customs, or public procurement. Like when repeats every day that corrupted politicians are only those who ruled four years before him (but not Ilir Meta).
Whoever wants to believe that, go ahead.
Nevertheless, this little story is a direct insult to all knowledge and historical conscience that man has acquired about politics, power, and every principle of freedom and democracy that the world has ever known.
Of course, these types of stories are told every day in third-world countries by similar leaders that ensure their people that the more power they have the more splendid will be the road to the future.
