From Genc Burimi
When I saw the two-and-a-half-hour interview-narrative of former Deputy Prime Minister Arben Ahmetaj, instinctively, another television image was superimposed on the first one. An archival document on YouTube, where Kadri Hazbiu, in handcuffs, stands in front of the jury, marble-faced and prematurely aged. The former interior minister of Enver Hoxha, almost the number two of the former Albanian dictatorial regime, with a half-defeated and half-revolted tone addressed the popular judge with these words: “They tortured me so humanly that I asserted untruths! ». And the judge of the regime who replied: “Yes, you yourself were the Minister of that department that you say tortured you.
You were also torturing others?!» Between the feeling of mercy on the one hand for the poor Kadri Hazbiu, since you can never agree with acts that affect human dignity, but also the feeling of boundless pain on the other hand for those hundreds and thousands of innocent victims that he executes and that regime , whom he served, not only tortured but also killed without mercy, a clear mind makes the selection by itself. Who should feel more sorry for you, the people who are victims of politics or the politicians who are victims of politicians?
Arben Ahmetaj, until recently, served the third power in a row in Albania, “Rlindja”, which occupied the country after half a century of communism, followed by a quarter of a century of Pedishism. Only in the last ten years of the “Renaissance” of Edi Rama and Arben Ahmetaj and company, there are more than one million Albanians who have left the country because of this kleptocratic power of the “Renaissance” that the former deputy prime minister painted in his interview, as if it were a Dante painting.
The renaissance of Mr. Arben Ahmetaj that has gripped Albania with the metastases of billions of euros of concessions monitored by the Ministry of Finance has achieved the historical record of removing more Albanians in a decade than the three conquerors of the past together, the Ottomans, the fascists and the Nazis. Without counting the victims who left their heads in the icy waters of the Manshit. To a large part of the Albanians who had the opportunity to watch Arben Ahmetaj on TV from Switzerland, which continues to harbor dirty money and dirty money politicians, only one sad thought dominates: what (s) have you done to this country? bastards?!
He himself, Arben Ahmetaj, when he watches his monologue again in the replay, will reach the same conclusion: as a citizen, you feel surprised and humiliated when you hear what was played and continues to be played on the backs of the entire people by a mafia gang in power under the deafening silence of a justice that has resigned and deals with flies when the bulls have horned over the public loot.
Negative character but asking the right questions
And yet, you couldn’t listen to Arben Ahmetaj’s story without a grain of mercy that we should have towards every human being who suffers in her flesh. This separates civilization from barbarism. A civilized order does not subject the sinner to barbarism as it did in the Middle Ages and as happens in authoritarian regimes. Threatened personally with death and up to his child, Arben Ahmetaj did not stop hinting that one day he could be eliminated, that he had taken everything into account and that death was already an inseparable part of his scenarios for the future. It was as if you were listening to Prigozhin.
But although in dictatorial Russia and without justice these phenomena are not surprising, how is it possible that in Albania of Western justice a former deputy prime minister confesses that he received death threats three times, indicating the country and the persons, and no investigation be undertaken? Where are the SPAK, or the prosecutor’s office of Tirana, or the intelligence services? How can death threats against those who have exercised public authority be left and trivialized and justice not show its teeth? A ql passivity shows that even that simple Albanian without power can legitimately worry about his fate and that of his children. The Prime Minister of the Netherlands and members of the Dutch royal family received such threats from the drug mafia some time ago.
The entire West was shocked and the necessary measures were taken both in the investigations and for the protection of the threatened persons because it is about the trust that the public should have in the bodies that should guarantee the physical safety of everyone. But in Albania, justice proves that it works like politics: if you were mean and you betrayed the dome of power, and to hell no one will move even a little finger. Is this normal justice which, 48 hours after those stories we heard, does not make any pronouncement regarding the attempts to murder that we heard from the mouth of the former Prime Minister?
Second, 48 hours after the interview – fortunately for the former Minister of Finance, there is no pronouncement from the justice system in Albania regarding the over-abuse of public funds denounced by Mr. Ahmetaj.
Ahmetaj can be a negative character and a villain for justice and the majority of Albanians who are still suffering the consequences of his policies as a former senior statesman, but this can never be turned into a pretext to turn a deaf ear to questions rights and blows that he lays down. No normal justice in a normal country in the West would close its eyes and ears to the confessions of a “repentant”. How is it possible that a journalist arrives and finds the fugitive, fixes an appointment for him, makes him talk for hours, while SPAK does not even care to know what Ahmetaj knows. When it comes to America’s interest, we saw how an American prosecutor did not hesitate and went all the way to Vienna to meet the Albanians of Mac Gonigal to see what they had to say that could endanger America’s national security. Although it turned out to be a soap bubble, this is the role of justice, not to neglect any track when it comes to files with national interests. How is it explained that Spak deploys more energy and measures not to save a single bit of information from a Berishe or a Malltez in a file of 15 years where the public money that can be recovered is close to zero, and this Spak does not show the diligence little to know what Ahmetaj knows about a file where Albanians can recover colossal sums from their sweat?
“Where are the 60 million euros of the Tirana incinerator”, Ahmetaj asked several times in the interview. He pretended not to know. And even if you knew, the problem is not there, but in the absolute indifference of SPAK these two years, not to move a hair to enter this mega theft in the history of the Albanian nation. They say that Spak is investigating, but it turns out the opposite. It is the media that is investigating. The initiative of a Cim Peke is a bitter slap for the justice of the Westerners in Albania. Another slap is being given by the investigation of an opposition working group without any public means, who are the shareholders who are hiding behind 100% of the capital of the Tirana incinerator company that not only swallowed over 100 million euros for an object that was not never built, but these occult shareholders continue and collect like in a full casino 80 thousand euros a day for burning trash that necessarily can never be burned without an incinerator. Citing the investigation of the opposition member of the municipality of Tirana, Belind Kelliçi, Arben Ahmetaj says to the Spaku prosecutors, why don’t you do this investigation?
Moreover, the name of the main shareholder of the phantom incinerator exists, the Albanian-Swiss, Blerim Hoxha, who holds 40% of the shares according to Ahmetaj. He added strong suspicions that Tirana’s politicians have 20% of their shares hidden in a fiscal haven, where the missing “60 million” may have gone. Why should Belind Kelliçi investigate this? Why do you have to tell Arben Ahmetaj about these? Why don’t Spak’s prosecutors do it, those who are paid by the Albanians with thousands of dollars and euros monthly salary precisely to reveal the truth. What is this daily show with opposition politicians under investigation or under arrest, while at the same time 80 thousand euros are dripping from the pockets of Albanians, pure theft for a public service that never existed?
Shouldn’t those who signed with their hands for the phantom incinerators and for a missing “public service” account for where the money of the Albanians is going? He promised the Albanians impunity. Except she is nowhere. Some of those who are suspected of having a hand in the scheme of extorting Albanians with ghost generators find asylum abroad and give interviews of the “let’s tell them how it’s stolen” type (Ahmetaj, Mertiri…), while the rest of the suspects who located in Albania, those “two Centers of Tirana” as Ahmetaj calls them, flow happy days full of confidence that we will investigate them from this Spak, not only that he will not have, but not even minimal curiosity from justice about where the stolen millions have ended up have. So the question is posed as Ahmetaj and the opposition before him: when will you start raising the question Spak about where at least 60 million euros have evaporated from not building the phantom incinerator in Tirana? As in a Hollywood thriller scenario; even when you ask this question in the past tense, where has the money gone, the question immediately comes in the present tense: where are they going now that we are talking about 2 million euros per month (80 thousand euros per day) that are currently being paid for burning the trash of Tirana in an incinerator that was not built.
Years later, future generations of Albanians will laugh bitterly at this story: were their grandparents so idiotic that they bought an expensive transparent bottle of milk and could see inside that there was no milk? How can you pay for burning garbage in an incinerator that doesn’t exist? The fact is that today’s generation is not ideal at all, but betrayed by the local “elites” and by the West, which continues to tell these citizens and this justice, continue like this, you are doing well. How can the Albanians ask their justice why they are selling them the empty bottle, when SPAK does not even see that the bottle is empty? How do we want SPAK to demand the 60 million, when it does not even minimally raise the question of whether 60 million have disappeared, more, less…? It took such a simple truth to come out of the mouth of someone who has been inside the theft system, to realize what a surrealistic era Albania is experiencing with its supposed “new” right to make a mess in comparison with the old right.
Surrealism does not end with “where did the 60 million go”. I found it extended from the beginning to the end of the interview – thank you to Arben Ahmetaj, which would have continued all night if Cim Peka had not interrupted her after a full 2 and a half hours of conversation. On this occasion, let’s remember that other question raised by Ahmetaj in Spak’s address. Let’s paraphrase. Prosecutor of Spak, is it true that there are among you who have received villas as gifts, one prosecutor received a villa completely free and another at half price? According to the media, we are talking about the head of Spak himself, Altin Dumani, to whom a religious organization gave him a villa for free, and the other prosecutor, the famous Arben Kraja, who has a villa in the bay of Lalzi, unjustified with the salaries he receives, but they gave him a gift of half the value. We can imagine the annoyed face of these two prosecutors if they have heard Ahmetaj live, with that expression on their faces: “what do you care about the rumors of an escaped corrupt person”. Besides, it doesn’t matter who asks the question, what matters is the answer! Is it a rumor or is it true the accusation that Ahmetaj raised against the investigation body? Spaku investigates, it is said. Who investigates Spaku himself? Albanians pay with their taxes another institution in the galaxy of countless institutions of justice reform. This “leukocyte”, the Samaritan of justice who protected the people from the sins of justice itself, is named with three letters: ILD or the High Inspectorate of Justice. We did not even hear this institution, as respected as it is anonymous, make any statement 48 hours after this “rumor” so serious from the former Deputy Prime Minister when he said that he is being investigated for the value of majelica tiles and water pipes in his ex-wife’s villa by a Prosecutor who, ironically, owns a villa that he cannot justify… If the ILD does not open a survey and urgently for the alleged villas in Duman and Kraje, if only to make a refutation, for Albanians this will be more than an insult, a humiliation. Will the dance ever change from Vox Populi to Vox Lei in Albania? At the moment, the much advertised reform in justice leaves a bitter taste of injustice.
