Berisha attacks corruption in judiciary

TIRANA, Sep 29 – Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha attacked Sunday evening the corruption in the courts and prosecutor’s offices saying that deep reforms would be undertaken.
Berisha, on the other side, praised the country’s progress in graft watchdog Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index.
“We have won a very important fight,” said Berisha at a press conference. “The fight against corruption is the fight against the mother of all evils,” he added.
in a rare and surprise news conference held late evening Sunday Berisha made it clear that corruption in the judiciary needed deep reforms, adding that no judges’ or prosecutors’ ‘ass’ (after asking for pardon for the word) had set at the defendant’s bench.
Albania made a jump of 0.5 points in the Transparency International index from 2.9 in 2007 to 3.4 in 2008. The report rates a country’s perceived corruption from zero to ten, where zero stands for extremely corrupt and ten for where graft is perceived to be absent.
This year’s result represented the best score card in the region. Macedonia registered an improvement of 0.3 points, Serbia stayed at the same level while Montenegro, Greece, Rumania and Slovenia registered a 0.1 point step up. The index for both Bosnia and Moldova dropped by 0.1 points.
Albania jumped 20 places from 105 to 85 in 180 countries rated in the index.
“An official task force created to fight corruption and economic crime has increased the number of officials prosecuted and sentenced for corruption, also building confidence among the public that corruption can be punished in Albania,” the report said.
“The report recognizes indisputably the government’s merit in the fight against corruption,” said Berisha.
But the opposition immediately reacted the next day. Main opposition Socialist party leader Edi Rama called Berisha a liar on his word on salary increase adding the government was grabbing the money with taxes.
Ilir Meta of the opposition Socialist Movement for Integration went further saying that Berisha was attacking the judiciary during the investigation of the March 15 blast in Gerdec ammunition disposal factory, for which they also blame Berisha personally.
The pe5remier, on his side, said it was up to the prosecutors to decide whether the blast was a corruption case or a huge human irresponsibility.