Corruption remains a main issue of concern

TIRANA, July 27 – Albania is a NATO member and is looking forward to get the candidate status from the European Union. Meanwhile common Albanians are also waiting to get the visa-free regime by the end of the year.
But in this long process, which asks for many fundamental reforms, central and local authorities, and also common Albanians should first try to get rid of the high level of corruption spread all around the country at all levels of the society.
That is mentioned continuously in all the reports prepared from the international institutions and also the requests, or benchmarks the country should fulfill before getting the reward of a different level of participation at the before-mentioned organizations.
The independent watchdog Freedom House says in its 2010 report that while Albania’s democracy score” has improved over the last decade, it has gotten worse since the high point reached in 2005. The main causes of this are the stubbornly high level of corruption, the compromised judiciary and, most worryingly, a lack of credible strategy by the government to deal with these issues.
Freedom House claims the judicial system is not entirely independent, with the government continuing to intimidate judges and prosecutors when bringing politically sensitive cases to court. “Two ministers were accused of abuse of office, but their cases were dismissed by the High Court on procedural grounds,” it notes.
Albania still lacks a comprehensive strategy on judicial reform. As a result, parliament could not adopt the draft law “On Establishment of Administrative Courts and Administrative Dispute” that was submitted by the government at the end of 2008, which would establish specialized administrative courts and shorter judicial procedures for administrative disputes. The business community supported the adoption of the law, considering it an important step toward shortening judicial administration processes. “This is a bad news for investors,” says Ervin Bushati, economic secretary of the main opposition Socialist Party in Albania.
Corruption continues to be a widespread phenomenon in Albania and the perception of corruption in various public services is high and seems actually to be getting worse. For example, a US Agency for International Development poll conducted at the beginning of 2009 found that, “almost half of the sample (48.5 percent) believes that corruption has increased in comparison to the previous year, while 38 percent think that it has remained the same.” And Transparency International’s 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Albania 95th, down 10 positions from the previous year. “The ranking shows that Albania remains one of the most problematic countries in the region with regard to the fight against corruption,” Freedom House notes.
Immunity of high officials continues to be an obstacle in the fight against corruption, which was used as grounds for dismissing the criminal case against Minister of the Environment Fatmir Mediu in relation to the Gerdec ammunition plant explosion, which killed 26 people in 2008. Government efforts to tackle corruption have stalled at the strategy stage or are only selectively applied. Furthermore, the government’s anti-corruption strategy lacks a concrete timetable and mechanisms.
Albania should work in all its structures and in all of them it has to really , seriously and sincerely fight corruption.