TIRANA, July 31 – Shkelzen Selimi, another High Court member, was ousted on Monday by the justice reform’s Independent Qualification Commission for inappropriate ties with the world of organized crime.
Although most judiciary figures have so far been ousted due to incorrect or false wealth declarations, the IQC focused on Selimi’s professional integrity and inappropriate links with elements of organized crime as the reasons that led to his ousting.
According to information ensured by international experts, Selimi influenced a 2015 High Court decision to not extradite the widely-sought Arben Qimja to Italy, as the country where he had faced the judicial system several times.
The judge appears to have used a car in the ownership of Qimja’s driver for about two years, while data stemming from a number of Albanian institutions had also uncovered his links to organized crime.
With Qimja’s ousting, the High Court is further shrinked to five members, out of whom three have successfully passed the first re-evaluation stage, while judges Artan Broci and Medi Bici are still awaiting their verdict.
As it is, the court is almost in deadlock, with about 26,000 files pending to be processed.
Meanwhile, a number of Albanian experts, the most renowned of whom Fatos Lubonja, have argued that despite warnings by a number of legal bodies of the risks associated with the vetting process, the majority of which have come true, international representatives have continued to support it and have consequently become a big part of the problem.
Among the factors that make international representatives in Albania ‘blind’ to the deadlock brought by the vetting process, Lubonja lists a feeling of superiority, ignorance and manipulation, ideological choice, conflict of interest and, last but not least, the corrupt affairs of the government currently in power.
“Following the activities and announcements of EU Ambassador Vlahutin or US Ambassador Donald Lu (who were exposed as the reform’s champions), as well as of some EU functionaries such as Hahn, it is unable not to notice a superior stand that dictates and imposes choices which are made mandatory for Albanians,” Lubonja writes for Panorama.
Concerning ignorance, experts have pointed out that international representatives can never fully understand Albania’s social and political reality, a fact made worse by the fact that “a group of Albania activists, and not only, in one way or another caught by the majority, mainly by the power of money, roam around embassies and give their ‘independent opinion’ favoring the government on what is happening in Albania.”
Equally important experts have classified the ideological choices of most international representatives that escape critical thinking because Rama’s Socialist Party is in line with Europe’s prevailing central-leftist political alignment.
“Two reasons facilitate this support. First is the misinformation that the SP is a leftist party and second is the fact that center-left parties in the West have also become insensitive to the most frail part of society – which has also led to their loss of popularity,” Lubonja writes.
Lastly, the conflict of interest and the government’s corrupt affairs are presented by experts as closely interrelated.
A number of them have stated that internationals living in Albania have not escaped getting caught by deals that could benefit them or their countries in economic and business terms, in exchange of their support towards the majority of the country – no matter the party representing the majority at the time.
