TIRANA, July  14 /ATA/ Prime Minister Edi Rama has described the vote to lift the immunity of the former Deputy Prime Minister Arben Ahmetaj, a Member of the Parliament of Albania as a test for the government.

“Today we voted a request by SPAK to authorize the arrest of an MP, who has performed important duties in our governments as a minister and deputy prime minister. The case of the highest official that has been caught up in the investigation web of SPAK, was another test for us, as the initiators of the Justice Reform when in the opposition, as firm leaders when we took office and its steadfast guarantors since the reform was approved and the beginning of implementation thereafter,” the Prime Minister said in a statement from the govt. seat.

Rama emphasized that the justice of the quarter- century transition had turned impunity into a humiliating norm for Albanians and Albania

“Whoever has heard me since the very beginning, I believe they remember how I have stood up for this Reform. When I said that we don’t want another burden on Justice like the previous ones, but we want the old justice system to be reversed, I thought very carefully about what I said and I said exactly what I meant. When I spoke about the old system, I did not only have in mind the stinking rot of pseudo-democratic justice throughout the quarter-century transition, when impunity had become a humiliating norm for Albanians and Albania, but I also had in mind the very miserable culture of a ruthless justice for the common people and of a justice that had submitted itself to the man vested with power, a culture whose roots go as far back as the first day of the establishment of the Albanian state until recently in our days,” he said.

According to Prime Minister Rama, it had never happened that a lawbreaker in power was treated like an ordinary person in violation of the law.

“From 1912 until the years when we, the Socialist Party of Albania, took a leap in the dark to carry the Justice Reform out with success, never had it happened that a lawbreaker in power was treated like an ordinary person in breach of law.”

The only case, he emphasized, was the arrest of former Prime Minister Fatos Nano.

“The only case in the historical memory of 33 years since the fall of the proletarian justice system, when a man vested with power has been punished by the courts of this country, that of former Prime Minister Fatos Nano was, in fact, the last case of the Albanian state tradition, of the persecution and political imprisonment of an opponent of the next arbitrary government, from the time before the kingdom until recently. The period of the communist dictatorship was then the most monstrous mirror image of that barbaric culture of justice which acted to satisfy the appetite of the one at the top,” said Rama.

The Parliament of Albania approved Friday in a plenary session with 117 votes in favor the request of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Corruption and Organized Crime, for  granting authorization for the arrest and the exercise of search in the residence of former Deputy Prime Minister Arben Ahmetaj, MP elected in 2021.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Arben Ahmetaj was not present in the plenary session.

/r.e/sm/