Opposition Returns To Boycotting

TIRANA, June 12 – The opposition Socialist Party lawmakers again boycoted the parliament’s session Thursday, this time until presidential decrees were on their tables. They said they would not return to the session if it would not discuss the nomination of the new Supreme Court judges decreed from the president.
Every politician in the country acknowledges that corruption in the judicial system is a big shortcoming and a great obstacle in the country’s integration aspirations, adding they would do their utmost to change that image.
But the recent fight between the two main political groupings openly shows that is much a demagogy. The two main groupings _ governing Democratic Party of Prime Minister Sali Berisha and main opposition Socialist Party of Tirana Mayor Edi Rama _ are exchanging their ever-squabbling words on the election of five new judges of the Supreme Court.
In May President Bamir Topi issued five decrees nominating the five new judges for the Supreme Court.
Following that it is up to the parliament to discuss and vote on the nominees.
But it seemed the governing Democrats were not pleased with the nominations and made it clear that a recent verdict of the Constitutional Court said the president should be first counseled with the parliamentary groups and then make his nominees.
In other words that means they are to vote down Topi’s nominations.
At this time the opposition Socialists, and other allies, came out to Topi’s protection saying Berisha was doing that because the nominees were not his favored ones.
The Parliament Speaker Jozefina Topalli came out to say they were purely following the procedure and after that was discussed at the parliamentary commission the five decrees are to be debated and voted in the next two weeks.
Like many other cases the two sides will come out with two different reports from the commission that discussed the nominations.
One would immediately consider that a fight for power from the two main groupings and another show of force, with nothing in connection concerning the reform of the judiciary that has always been considered as the most corrupted in the post-communist country.