British ambassador urges political consensus on major reforms

TIRANA, Sep 30 – British Ambassador to Tirana Fraser Wilson spoke in an interview to 60 Minutes television show about political developments in the country, next general elections and also the March 15 blast which killed 26 persons and injured 300 others.
Fraser urged the political forces in the country to continue work jointly in the reforms in the electoral process, judiciary and other areas.
He said that if they do not have a general agreement nothing could work for long.
The ambassador also reminded Albanian politics that independence of the institutions was very important and there should be no dominance by, say, the government or the parliament, adding that check and balance controls were important to be taken into consideration.
“If an organization or an institution makes that (taking others under control) then we’re going in the road of dictatorship,” he said.
He also said that public service was very much politicized in Albania and that was wrong. Administration should not change any time a new political party comes into power.
He reminded Albanian authorities that the money British taxpayers had given as assistance to the country failed to produce results due to the changes in the administration.
Officials in charge of an emergency civil plan could not apply that in the case of Gerdec blast because they were new ones in the post. The old ones trained for that had been moved.
The ambassador urged the government and the political parties to carry out what recommendations they had got from the OSCE on the elections in order to reach international standards required for a future NATO member country.
Speaking on the March 15 blast in Gerdec the ambassador said that tragedy could be avoided but there remained many other questions to be answered on how it was created, who were the responsible persons.
He also called on leaving the prosecutors free and not expert pressure on them in order to bring out good results of the causes of the explosion.
Albania’s general situation is not that attractive to British investors, he said. The right on property should be clear, he said, before expecting investment. The other basic thing is the justice system, its impartiality and application of its verdicts.