TIRANA, April 11 /ATA/- Freedom House organization published on Wednesday the annual report “Nations in transit” pointing out that Albania is in the category of countries with a democracy in transition or hybrid regime, although it has marked a slight increase in overall scores owing to the recent peaceful elections.
Regarding June 25 parliamentary elections, the report, a part of which was published by the Voice of America, points out that they marked progress due to the wide-ranging guarantees offered to opposition. Thanks to such improvement, the overall score of democracy index climbed to 4.11 from 4.14 it was the previous year.
DP’s boycott of parliament during the first four months 2017 halted the reform of electoral code pursuant to OSCE/ODIHR recommendations.
The ruling Socialist Party (SP) and the opposition party, DP, reached an agreement on May 18 that ended the latter’s boycott of both parliament and the June elections. While paving the way for a calm election, the agreement put a major strain on the administrative and legislative framework of the electoral system, as by imposing its political logic over the legal stipulations of the electoral code.
Boycott of parliament by opposition undermined judicial reform, as DP did not present its three nominees to the Ad-Hoc Parliamentary Committee charged with selecting the members of bodies responsible for vetting of judges and prosecutors.
Freedom House says that in 2017 there was some progress in the fight against administrative corruption and bribery, especially in the police force, as well as in the fight against drugs which was reflected in a marked reduction of cannabis cultivation. But the progress in crackdown on cannabis cultivation was dampened by the announcements of Italian law enforcement agencies that former Minister of Interior Saimir Tahiri was linked with an Albanian-American network of drugs trafficking.
The report says that cannabis cultivation has drastically dropped in Albania, which is partly due to intervention of Albanian police.
The report says that achievements in crackdown on corruption were upset by election of Ilir Meta as president, who is regarded by many citizens as the symbol of corruption as well as election by simple majority of short-term Prosecutor General on December 18, which seriously undermined the trust and independence of institution,” the report said.
This report and the media interest have prompted the reaction of President Ilir Meta’s spokesman, Tedi Blushi, who says:
“It is regrettable that this report of Freedom House is misused in the interest of unilateral political agendas in our country. President Meta was elected in a completely constitutional and democratic process with a majority of over 3/5 of votes. It came at a crucial moment for stability of the country and way out of pre-electoral political crisis. In a strained and unilateral tone, not only does this report distort these truths, it intends to create artificial focuses in a speculative and deliberate way,” according to Tedi Blushi.
He goes on saying: If Freedom House is interested to shed light upon corruption in Albania, it should conduct an unbiased investigation into distortion of the facts and truths in this report and for sure they will discover the concrete symbols of national and international corruption. To that end, we are open to cooperate with Freedom House either.” /a.g/sm/
