Parliament passes lustration law

TIRANA, Dec 23 – Albania parliament on Monday passed a lustration law aimed at purging public posts from persons linked to the former communist secret police.
The Democratic Party-dominated 140-seat parliament voted 74-2 (one abstained) in favor of passing the law, based on which all persons linked to the former secret police Sigurimi, from November 1944 when Albania was liberated from the Nazi occupiers until December 1990 when political pluralism was declared, cannot stay in public posts.
There was strong objection from the political opposition and also suggestion from international community for a broader consensus.
“Albanian parliament made history,” said Prime Minister Sali Berisha.
The opposition Socialists an other smaller parties boycotted the voting saying they were not against the law but the draft which, they said, would be politically exploited by Prime Minister Sali Berisha to move from the posts those prosecutors and judges involved in corruption issues involving himself and his family and cabinet members.
They mentioned the blast at the ammunition disposal factory in march, which killed 26 people, the trial case against Foreign Minister Lulzim Basha for the Durres-Kukes-Morini road in which he is accused of abuse of post when he served as transport minister when the contract was signed, and also the scandal of a Bosnian businessman linked to Berisha’s daughter.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and its Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights said the “the law has serious constitutional and political implications, and postponing the vote to allow for wider consultation and public debate would be welcome.”
The same suggestion was also made by the United States and Britain with statements last week.
A five-member Authority of Figures’ Control is created by the parliament to function until 2014 to check public officials from the country’s president to as low as high school masters.
Late communist dictator Enver Hoxha led his Balkan country into more than four decades of international isolation and dictatorship using the intelligence service as one of the strongest weapons of the communist regime, spying on people’s lives and buttressing the rule of those in power.
The lustration law is a Latin term referring to ritual purification used in Eastern European countries to purge from public life all those who collaborated with the hated secret police of the communist era.
The law has long been an area of political contest in post-communist Albania with the Democrats claiming their law installed during the first years of the 1990s was canceled when the Socialists came to power in 1997.
The Socialists, who insist they are not against the law but the draft prepared by Berisha for his personal profit, have said they would ask the Constitutional Court to decide on the new law.