Forests, Pigs And The Rule Of Law

By Maklen Misha
“Written laws are like spider’s webs; they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful”, said a Scythian prince in the sixth century B.C. Unfortunately the prince might as well have been talking of Albania of our days, where, although much is said of the rule of law, little is done about strengthening it and where what passes for rule of law is often but a mockery of what one would expect from a country that aspires to join the EU. We are reminded of this painful fact by the incessant wrangling and fighting between justice institutions and politicians and by the interference and pressure that the later regularly exercise upon courts, the prosecution or the police.
Let us for instance look at the reaction of the Prime Minister on the decision of the Constitutional Court of Albania which declared unconstitutional a law that forced Albanian businesses to pay upfront 15% of any fines for alleged tax evasion, before they could even state their case to the courts. The court also added that the government must compensate businesses that have been affected by the law. While even ordinary people, not particularly well versed in the intricacies of law and jurisprudence, realized that this law violated one of the basic principles of justice, that of presumed innocence – imagine for a moment if a suspected thief or murderer was asked to serve 15% of his or her sentence before even having a chance to state their case to the courts – the Prime Minister appeared surprisingly puzzled and filled with indignation at the decision. But if there was any real surprise in this matter, it was not the Court’s decision, but the threatening language the Prime Minister used, warning that courts have too much power and that he is planning to solve this problem through reforms. Or one could mention the reaction of the Minister of Finance who complained that the “judicial cannot block the work of the other constitutional organs!” and that he was not about to pay back a dime. If one adds to these reactions the not so veiled threat of the Prime Minister towards those who dared to give house arrest to the Director of the Albanian Tax Office Arben Sefgjini, who is accused of kidnapping, torturing and murdering an Albanian Macedonian businessman during Mr. Berisha’s tenure as president in the early 1990s, then one has to ask the question: To what extent can one trust the Prime Minister or the ruling majority for that matter, when they talk of their commitment to the rule of law, at a time when it is becoming obvious that they consider themselves to be above the law? Because after all one of the most important principles of the rule of law is the autonomy of the justice organs and their ability to check the power of the executive.
But yet another very important principle of the rule of law is being regularly ignored in Albania, that of equality before the law. Again one can mention the Sefgjini case, and the Prime Minister’s refusal to relieve him of his duties even though the court decided that the case against him – for some of the most serious accusations one can imagine – was strong enough to warrant placing him under house arrest. Or the cases of members of parliament beating journalists or football referees, and actually bragging about it with total impunity. But in fact there is no need for one to go that far because one encounters enough cases of this nature by simply going for a stroll through the streets of Tirana. It is depressingly common to see politicians or other powerful individuals driving expensive cars, break any traffic rules they please – things that would at the very least have cost the rest us our licenses – while traffic policemen stand idly by, humbly acknowledging the privileged status of these lucky untouchables. Not that the law affords these people any such privileges of course.
But whereas in cases such as those mentioned above what passes for the rule of law in Albania discriminates, albeit in favor of the rich and powerful, in many other cases it seems to lose any ability to discriminate. As for instance in the decision of the Ministry of Finance to tax humanitarian aid coming into Albania, and justifying its decision as a reaction to the odd case of tax evasion by individual charity organizations! The absurdity of this law was captured perfectly by the director of one charity foundation who, quoting an old Albanian proverb, said: “It is true that every forest has its pigs, but”- he added, “it makes little sense to cut the whole forest so that one can catch the pigs!” The problem is that a considerable number of measures and laws passed by the government to date have followed this strange logic. One can mention the moratorium on seagoing vessels, the imposition of a 20% VAT on NGOs or on books printed abroad because the odd NGO or publishing house has faked their receipts. In their entirety such measures are indicative of a government that is trying to hide the lack of a long term vision in the fight against crime and informality as well as its inability to punish those guilty of such offences, by improvising laws whose sole purpose is to address individual cases. And the absurdity of this logic is displayed in its full glory by the example of the Director of the Traffic Police for Tirana, who in an attempt to reduce the number of road accidents in the capital, suddenly decided to declare war on motorcycles blocking 1200 of them in the space of two months. Using an argument identical to that used by the government in the cases mentioned above, and managing to keep a straight face while he presented it, the director justified his actions by making some strange calculations on the monetary value of any individual young man from Tirana, of between 25 and 35 years of age and with an average IQ, which according to him amounted to $ 2 million. And if the logic is identical to that of the government how can one criticize this gentleman for saving Tirana an amount of money to the tune of 1200 motorcycles x $ 2 million?