President sacks Prosecutor General, names new one

TIRANA, Nov. 22 – Albanian President Bamir Topi on Thursday dismissed Prosecutor General Theodhori Sollaku from his post, supporting the report of the parliamentary investigative committee saying he had failed to fight crime and corruption in the country.
Topi also nominated Ina Rama, 35, for the post of the top prosecutor. The parliament will meet to confirm her nomination. Topi based his decision on a report of a parliamentary investigative committee passed earlier this month, saying that Sollaku had not properly performed his constitutional and legal functions.
“It cannot be denied that the prosecutor’s office activity has not responded well to the phenomena of the organized crime, corruption and crime in general, which has negatively affected functioning of the state and also created a lack of security for the citizens’ life,” said a statement.
Topi “evaluates that the current prosecutor, Mr. Theodhori Sollaku, has inadequately discharged his constitutional and legal functions. He has not managed to have an impact with his authority to avoid violations noted from the parliamentary investigative committee during the activity of the prosecutor’s office. He has not managed to have cooperation with the other state structures to properly fight and prevent crime in the country,” said the statement.
Opposition parties boycotted most of the impeachment process, accusing Prime Minister Sali Berisha’s governing Democratic Party of trying to seize control of the judicial system. They had voted against the report of the committee in which they did not take part.
After the announcement Thursday, they stopped the parliament’s plenary session.
The parliament’s report said that Sollaku had failed to cooperate with international law enforcement agencies, approved the release of some convicted criminals without proper cause, and failed to act in serious criminal cases.
Sollaku, who was once Berisha’s legal adviser, had rejected the allegations and called his dismissal a ‘political farce’ that violated the Constitution.
“Mr. Topi’s decision today concluded the farce on the dismissal of the Prosecutor General. It is to be pitied that flagrant violations of the Constitution started from the executive and passed blindly at the parliament were ratified overnight, also blindly, from Mr. Topi,” said Sollaku. Another detail worth mentioning came out after the vote for Ms. Rama in the new post of the Prosecutor General. She was voted by 83 lawmakers, which means some from the opposition again (following the case of the presidential election in July) supported the vote of the governing Democrats.
That showed again the situation among the opposition coalition.
For Ms. Raman to a very nice future lies ahead. She has to deal not only with a total restructuring of the prosecutors’ system, give concrete results that may be seen by everyone at home and abroad, but should also take care of establishing some ‘diplomatic ties’ with the opposition, which did not support her today.