TIRANA, July 8 /ATA/ – Main opposition Democratic Party lawmaker Ina Zhupa said on Wednesday that a government decision to allocate 4.2 million euros from the state’s emergency reserve fund to finance a concert by Kanye West violates Albanian constitution.
Zhupa, chair of parliament’s Committee on Culture, Tourism and the Diaspora, argued that the concert had been presented as a private investment and should therefore have been financed by its organisers through ticket sales, sponsorships and private investment.
Speaking to reporters at parliament, Zhupa said the decision was not merely a poor political choice or a misuse of public funds, but also ran counter to Article 101 of Albania’s Constitution, which allows the government to issue normative acts only in cases of necessity and urgency.
“The emergencies for which this fund exists are earthquakes, floods, fires and disasters that threaten people’s lives, property and safety -not the financing of a concert,” she said.
Zhupa also pointed to ongoing wildfires, shortcomings in civil protection capacity and funding needs in healthcare, education, agriculture and pensions, arguing that public money would be better spent in those sectors.
She warned that a normative act should not be used to bypass parliamentary oversight whenever the government seeks to finance what she described as an unjustified expenditure.
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