Deputy prime minister’s sacking raises questions
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- Arben Ahmetaj’s sacking was coupled with the replacement of career diplomat Zef Mazi with Majlinda Dhuka as chief negotiator for EU membership.
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TIRANA, July 26, 2022 - Albania’s deputy prime minister, Arben Ahmetaj, has been unceremoniously sacked by Prime Minister Edi Rama with little explanation, raising questions over whether his involvement in the trash incinerators affair was behind the sacking.
Ahmetaj, who was also minister of state for reconstruction, was replaced in the number two spot by Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Belinda Balluku, increasingly one of the most influential voices in the Socialist Party.
Ahmetaj’s sacking was coupled with the replacement of career diplomat Zef Mazi with Majlinda Dhuka as chief negotiator for EU membership, a position which will now be given a cabinet-level position as state minister. Dhuka, a virtual unknown to the public, is a lawyer part of the group of aides Rama has had with him from his days as Tirana mayor.
Ahmetaj has had one of the longest careers in government since Rama took over in 2013. He had served as minister of economy, then of finance, with an interruption in 2019, when he returned to parliamentary life, to be included again in the government cabinet after the November earthquake that year.
Ahmetaj has been a consistent target of the opposition for his involvement in the incinerator issue, where massive corruption is being investigated by special prosecutors and which has already landed two ex Socialist MPs in jail awaiting trial.
While Rama motivated the move with a shift of priorities from reconstruction to the energy crisis, the opposition Democratic Party says the departure of Mr. Ahmetaj is precisely related to the issue of incinerators.
"Edi Rama, in order to wash his hands of his ugly crime, the affair among the biggest in the history of the country, the affair of the incinerators, has dismissed Arben Ahmetaj,” said DP leader Sali Berisha.
Ylli Manjani, an opposition lawyer and former minister of justice, wrote on social media that there is now an expectation in the Albanian public that Rama sacks people that are about to be arrested
“Beyond this public expectation, I think … [Ahmetaj] will neither be arrested nor get any slap on the wrist. I see his sacking more as a momentary revenge of the PM born on some suspicions of leaking conversations,” Manjani noted.
Mazi’s sacking is even more surprising to experts as the country has just started the EU negotiation process. Just a week ago, Mazi, together with Foreign Minister Olta Xhaçka, led the first session of the analytical review of the legislation.
"Majlinda Dhuka, a high technical profile instead of the high diplomatic profile of Ambassador Mazi, becomes Chief Negotiator and Minister of State under the Prime Minister," Rama said.
Dhuka currently works as a director in the Department of Development and Good Governance at the Prime Minister's Office. A trained lawyer, she does not have any previous direct experience in matters related to the European integration process.
