TIRANA, June 20 – Albania’s ruling Socialist Party-led coalition is determined to go through with the justice reform regardless of the opposition’s refusal to approve it.
The ad hoc commission on judicial reform convened Monday and discussed the seven laws of the justice reform which must be adopted along with the constitutional changes such as: the law on the Constitutional Court, the bill on vetting judges and prosecutors, the bill on the National Bureau of Investigation, the bill on Judiciary, and the bill on Prosecution. While the opposition decided to boycott the meeting, the Socialist Party chairman of the Ad Hoc Commission Fatmir Xhafaj said that he regretted the opposition’s decision to walk out of the meeting. Nevertheless, he assured that work on reform will continue. “The reform cannot be effective if these 7 bills are not approved. The approval of reform will pave the way to the establishment of new institutions since the existing ones will no longer be operational. The process will be concluded around July 15th,” Xhafaj said.
Meanwhile, the commission’s deputy chairman, Democratic Party MP Oerd Bylykbashi, criticized the actions of the commission as unilateral. “If they continue to act unilaterally, they will face all our resistance against these anti-constitutional amendments,” Bylykbashi said. The deputy chairman warned that the opposition will not recognize any unilateral action of the ruling majority. “If the opposition experts are not included, if there is no consensus, then all of this is a castle in the sand,” Bylykbashi told Tirana Times.
“If there is no consensus we are willing to put an end to the whole draft,” he added, warning that the Democratic Party will “burn” its mandates if there is a vote leak in favor of the reform.
The opposition is determined to go ahead with the issue of reserved seats for institutions that do the vetting of judges and prosecutors. Without the reserved seats, the Democrats will not vote for the reform. The reform needs a qualified majority of 2/3 of votes to be adopted. The majority needs 94 votes to approve the reform, but until now they are short of eight votes.
