Editor’s take
The socialist deputies of the parliamentary commission of laws supported by a group of lawyers within the Socialist Party (SP) have held during these first two weeks of August several consultative meetings regarding the amendment of the current decriminalization law. The amendment aims to include an article with the aim of ‘de-spying’ the parliament, said a report carried by Top Channel TV on Wednesday. The alleged aim is to prevent from running for all those who have a file as an employee of the former state security (Sigurimi i Shtetit). The amendment will have another addition, which is about sanctioning in the law of decriminalization a special article about decommunization according to which former secretaries of the Party of Labor of Albania (PLA) are prevented from being active on the political scene.
According to the announcement of the above source, the target of this campaign are former PM Sali Berisha and former president Ilir Meta who are now heads of the Democratic Party and the Freedom Party, respectively.
These eventual amendments need 84 votes in the 140- member Parliament and SP sees the way out in the support of the DP faction of Enkelejd Alibeaj, a follower of former Democrat head Lulzim Basha dismissed as close collaborator of PM Edi Rama.
SP as political force has its legacy in the Party of. Labor of Albania which ruled this Balkan country for almost five decades under the communist tight dictatorship of late leader Enver Hoxha. The transformation of PLA into SP was accompanied with a process according to which all former communists turned from ‘red’ to ‘purple’ – Socialists’ symbolic color. For example former Speaker Gramoz Ruci, a strong hand in SP, was Interior Minister during the communist regime and is iil- famed for the bloody massacre in Shkodra, northern Albania, where young people were killed in the anti- communist struggle in the early 1990s. There are lots of other senior officials with a communist legacy while it’s huge the number of officials who are family members of the communist elite.
PM Edi Rama is the son of late Kristaq Rama, senior member of the 16- member Presidium of the People’s Assembly, and a close associate of main leaders of Hoxha’s leadership. Meanwhile, it is rumored that there is evidence that the late mother of the Prime Minister was a secret agent of the State Security.
Seeing things against this background it’s hard to see genuine results of the renewed scheme for the so called ‘decommunisation’ of Albania’s political scene after failure in more than three decades, but their chance has a possibility as the EU and the US support PM Edi Rama and his followers of the communist legacy!
This is another issue in discussion in Albania questioning the change of heart of the West regarding the past communist legacy and their strong support for the offsprings of the communist dictatorship.
/Argumentum.al
