TIRANA, Feb.19 – The ruling Socialist Party MP Ben Blushi, the strongest critical voice within the Socialists ranks continued his criticism unabated during an interview with Ora News television this week.
Blushi said that political parties in Albania are financed by dirty money coming from various illicit activities such as the drug trade, prostitution rings, and even robberies in the absence of transparency. According to Blushi, no single foreign investment in Albania has spent more money in the country than political parties during the elections campaign of 2013, a campaign which according to Blushi exceeded Euro 40 million. For the Socialist lawmaker, the money source is clear: the underworld.
And all this in Blushi’s view, stems from the fact that political parties are unwilling to declare their sources of funding.
“There are people who have said they donated 500,000 Euros to the party campaign, now I don’t want to prejudice anyone, but what I propose is that Socialist Party funding should be made public,” Blushi said during the interview.
Blushi reiterated that party funding is a public budget and that donations from the party’s membership should be enough to finance the party’s political campaign given the country’s small size, without the need to recruit rich people with a criminal past. Blushi added that his vision for the Socialist Party entails putting an end to the practice of anonymous donations.
The Socialist MP, who has previously criticized the party’s leadership for not holding party elections, once again linked the lack of internal democracy within the party with the infiltration of the criminal element. In his opinion, at a time when party elections, forums, and collegiality are lacking, many people with criminal records have exploited the opportunity to join the Socialist Party with a clear objective in mind: to dominate Albania’s economy.
According to Blushi, the lust for power is turning the Socialist Party into the party of one man, referring to Prime Minister Edi Rama, who is refusing to hold party elections because he is afraid of measuring growing discontent among people after two and a half years in power.
Blushi said that he is convinced that if the Socialist Party continues like this without the proper checks and balances in place, it will slowly turn into an unanswerable private business with the aim to hold power in Albania for as long as possible, bypassing first party and parliamentary control, and then even the law itself.
“Autocracies weren’t born in one day, there has always been a process,” Blushi said.
The Socialist lawmaker expressed the idea that the mandate of the party leader should be limited to two terms and that Prime Minister Edi Rama is open to elections for anyone in the party, but himself.
Rama’s answer that his mandate as chairman was automatically renewed after winning 1 million votes in the last general elections, does not stand in Blushi’s view.
“Ours was a coalition of 40 political parties, are you telling me that the electorate of the other 39 political parties voted for Rama to be Socialist Party chairman, too?” Blushi raised the question.
Blushi reiterated his stance that the system cannot be democratic, unless political parties are democratic, too.
According to the Socialist lawmaker, the initial hope and enthusiasm that followed the last general elections has started to fade and a clear indication of that is mass migration that has ensued.
“What was Rama’s answer to that? Germans and Italians immigrate, too! Of course they do, but neither does on such a scale,” said Blushi.
“If Italy would have lost Milan in 2015, like we lost a city with 100,000 inhabitants last year, at least 3-4 governments would have fell in Italy if mass migration would have been on the same scale. It is cynical to tell Albanians that Italians immigrate, too.” Blushi continued.
The Socialist MP also questioned the efficiency of an increasing number of concessionary agreements that have been already signed or planned by the current government.
“Running after the market is a deformed economic concept, the government sees it as a relief, but the government wasn’t created to relieve itself in the first place, instead it was born to make life easier for its citizens,” Blushi said.
Blushi found hard to explain this ‘concessions rush’ since in his view the state has duties and responsibilities for basic services and not everything can be given on concession, especially sectors that are not a priority.
In addition, the Socialist lawmaker sees it as a financial burden for generations to come since the majority of concession contracts extend beyond a decade, and from his point of view it would be unjust for future generations to inherit such a debt burden.
