TIRANA, April 2 – After an initial cartoon published in January, the US Embassy to Tirana wished Albanians April’s Fool Day by once again posting a caricature of US Ambassador Donald Lu going to buy ‘big fish’ and being sold ‘small fish’ in the context of an April Fool’s Day joke, reminding judges, politicians and prosecutors the time for substantial reforms in the judiciary is passing.
Lu has in the past written that Albanian politicians made promises for which both the EU and the US provided resources to help them keep and that Albanians are becoming impatient to the lack of punishment towards the ‘big fish’ of politics and the justice system.
Lacking a lengthy description this time, the caricature served to remind the international community is waiting for the justice reform to deliver concrete results and correctly pass through the vetting all judges and prosecutors.
So far, a number of judges and prosecutors have resigned to avoid the justice reform – a move Prime Minister Edi Rama has described as already a success of the vetting process.
The first judge to be officially ousted by the Independent Qualification Commission (IQC) – the judiciary reform’s official body of conduct – last week was Fatos Lulo, a Constitutional Court judge who failed to justify his wealth under the vetting.
The justice reform, which consists of ‘cleaning’ Albania’s justice system from corrupt judges and prosecutors, was one of the main conditions the European Union set in order for EU accession negotiations to begin for the country .
In this context, the IQC will verify the cleanliness of figure, wealth and professional skills of the judges and prosecutors applying to be part of the country’s new, reformed justice system.
The reform has been criticized by experts and the international community in part, however, of losing momentum and taking too long to properly deliver justice towards powerful judges and prosecutors who have been involved in corruption cases.
