Political debate threatens justice

TIRANA, July 19 – The High Council of Justice held a meeting Tuesday to discuss the accusations made by the opposition against the judges of the Electoral Code.
The judges themselves had sent a letter to the president, and also western ambassadors, making a case against the opposition’s claims that they had been paid up to half a million Euros to rule against the Socialists.
The Electoral College heard at least three opposition appeals against decisions of the election authorities, and always ruled in favor of the previous decisions, which left governing Democratic Party candidate Lulzim Basha as winner in the Tirana local race.
Opposition Socialists claimed they had won in the initial counting and that result changed in an illegal way afterwards by the election authorities.
Kreshnik Spahiu, the Council’s deputy, said that the opposition should offer proof for the accusation and if it has such then it should go to the prosecutor’s office and open penal cases against the College’s judges.
“We distance ourselves from any form of denigrating the personality of the judges at a time when there is no proof they have committed any penal act,” said Spahiu.