Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama at the symposium on combating corruption, with the participation of government members, heads of public institutions and the ambassadors of the USA, Croatia and Romania:

 

Hello everyone!

When it comes to corruption, we tend always to relate everything to reporting, investigation and trial. And it surely makes of justice reform and of a thorough transformation of the justice system an early and internal necessity of our society, from a system which actually has become a major bargain where justice is bought and sold, in a system where the constitutional guarantee of equality before the law becomes possible. But the fight against corruption is not only a denunciation, investigation and punishment; first of all it is modernization because it is not the people who corrupt the systems, it’s the systems that corrupt people.

It is no coincidence that countries where systems are built on stable institutions, corruption has less space, while in countries where institutions do not have stability and the mechanisms of interaction between them are lacking, corruption has a much larger space for the simple reason that at the end of the day corruption is an option to take what the system does not give and does not guarantee.

In this context, I am proud that we have taken a path of major and deep reforms aimed at building systems in every sector where the corruption alternative is fought through new quality institutions and service provided by institutions.

Allow me to bring here some very simple examples. We inherited a very serious problem in the energy sector, where among other things there was a widespread corruption, and it was not merely the illegality imposed by those citizens who used to steal electricity which was accepted by the government and by the state as a continued status quo in this sector, but also the escalation of evil in relations between representatives of the state or the staff for the reading of metres of citizens and consumers, who actually would buy through bribes a more reasonable bill for them than the one shown by the reader.

Today, we are about to conclude a project that will ensure traceability of all readers of metres in Albania. It is an electronic traceability that will make it possible for any excess of the average time estimated reading a metre to be signalized to the centre, and after the electronic signalization the centre will investigate the reasons for the delay in the reading process of the metre. This will obviously destroy once and for all this bad seed of the element of corruption in the system.

The appointment and dismissal of teachers was definitely connected with a total lack of a sustainable system in their appointment and dismissal, but because the system was fundamentally unstable, in this regard also corruption would wreak havoc because no objective criterion nor definitely merit decided who was going to be appointed or dismissed, but this was determined by an ability to pay in direct contact with the director of the education office. We have launched the portal “Teachers for Albania” where all those who claim to enter our education system as a teacher are ranked through a national competition testing their knowledge and skills.

Candidates earn a certain amount of scores recorded in a chart to which refer not only the respective directorates that want to employ teachers, but also the control centre at the Ministry of Education. Therefore, it is very difficult for someone looking for an employment to have a corruptive connection with the respective directorate because each appointment is traceable, and if the classification chart is skipped there is an immediate investigation of reasons why this happened. So, if we have today a thousand some hundred teachers employed through this system, we can say confidently that employment is made on the basis of merit, and because of this system, the alternative of corruption has lost its great weight it had in this sector.

Of course, there is still to do for the rest concerning temporary contracts or moves within the system. But even in this aspect, this element of the reform and the internal transformation of the system have proved successful in the fight against corruption.

Everybody knows that an area where the perception of corruption is very high, not only in Albania but in general in former communist countries, is healthcare. How can we reduce and minimize corruption in healthcare, with the aim of eliminating it? Again the answer comes from the reforms, from the necessary reforms to go towards hospital autonomy. Today, we have a system without hospital protocols that determine the cost of each service and of the treatment of each case, according to the categories in our hospitals. This means that there is a very large space for abuse and corruption, as there is no comprehensive definition of costs. Then, to go to hospital autonomy and to eventually to a stage where procurements are centred on the needs of hospitals, and in order to open a stage where troops in hospitals are autonomous in the management of their budget, we need to build the entire base of cost protocols. In this regard, we are moving quickly also thanks to the measures we have taken in parallel, such as the free check-up establishing a statistical basis the overall state of the population health, which in addition to increasing the disease prevention capacity, has the great benefit of providing statistical to policy making, data on which the whole financing system of the national healthcare service is built.

Regarding property titles, everyone knows that one of the places where the confrontation with the state office is tiring and exhausting, and corruption option is there to offer a much faster service – is the mortgage office. But it is an illusion to think that this problem can be solved simply by denouncing, investigating, judging people who abuse and breach the law because you can replace someone with someone else, but if the system is not there to guarantee service to citizens, corruptibility remains at a very high level because the same people in different systems behave in different ways.

I give often this example, and I will repeat it in front of you. I cannot imagine an Albanian citizen living in Germany, no matter how brave he is, to get inside a car and not use the seatbelts. While in Albania until recently, Germans travelled without a safety belt. Why? Because in different systems, the same people behave in different ways.

Going back to the mortgage offices, the solution is a full digitalisation of property maps, and the abolition of direct contact between citizens and the one serving, who has the monopoly of resolving the problem. He can solve the problem if he wants to, or he can decide to delay it until you understand that you have to pay for it.

But that’s not all. We are building a system that includes the mortgage offices and also a significant number of other services, where the staff attending citizens provide a completely different service from the staff working in the offices that produce documents. The system has started with a few pilot projects, primarily in the mortgage office in Tirana where change has been extraordinary, because all those who are at the counter do is address the demands of citizens, as compared to those in the offices who produce mortgage documents.

We will do the same in all 61 municipalities by building public integrated services, thus citizens will address to a one-stop-shop to have a broad number of services and necessary documents that this one-stop-shop will provide by addressing to all other services. So, it’s not the citizens who will go from office to office, being hostage of a system where corruption is an integral part, but it’s the state service that will do this for citizens. This integrated service will be soon launched in some municipalities in Albania, to be extended later to all municipalities across the country.

I could continue with many other examples that show how through reforms and modernization of systems, we can significantly reduce the role and weight of corruption in the relationship of citizens with the state.

However, all these said, without a fair justice system, it is very difficult to have an epochal leap like the one Albanians desire and deserve, in the fight against corruption, in the context of a much healthier and much more effective relationship, and definitely a more democratic one between the state and citizens.

We all know that we are stuck to the Vetting of judges and prosecutors in the current justice system.

Henry Kissinger said something that means a lot to this communication: “Corrupt politicians make the incorrupt look equally corrupt.” The same applies to judges. Corrupt judges make uncorrupted judges look equally corrupt. The same applies to prosecutors. Corrupt prosecutors make uncorrupted prosecutors look equally corrupted.

And this is a big reason why honesty and effort to serve fairly, usually among politicians, among prosecutors, among judges, among civil servants, are not enough for them to be perceived positively and with respect by people who, because of the corrupt people, think that all are equal. But this is also the reason why the vetting of judges and prosecutors is so important. Not only to clear the system of a significant number of judges and prosecutors who do not deserve to be part of that system so important to democracy, but also to give a very comforting message both to honest judges and prosecutors and to citizens, and to create a new moment, a new morality in this relationship as a basis to take the justice system to a whole new level. Also to create the conditions for everybody to feel treated equally at the doors of justice, regardless of their social status, of their possessions, of their name, of whom they belong to, where they come from, in what kind of policy they believe.

I hope very much that when the Venice Commission gives its final opinion about the law in a few days, this opinion will not encounter the resistance of the Constitutional Court. I might be personally wrong, but I have no reason to doubt that the opinion of Venice will fully support the law because it is a law built on the Constitution of the Republic of Albania, which is fully supported by the Venice Commission.

But I have reasons to doubt that the Constitutional Court will behave with the opinion the way we all want, because we have a first and not very encouraging sign of the behaviour of the Constitutional Court with the Venice Commission’s opinion on the law of property. The Constitutional Court’s interference in the law of property was contrary to the opinion of the Venice Commission, which it sought as an opinion that is not binding, but which when required in the civilized world, is considered to be unchallengeable under an unwritten agreement of the states with themselves, with their constitutions, with their citizens and with the Venice Commission.

Let me also tell you that we have been very encouraged by the latest anticorruption barometer of Transparency International, where Albania has been ranked with very high quota in terms of the willingness of the government to fight corruption. It is not everything, but it definitely is a lot when the perception that strives tirelessly to create a vocal segment of society, ranging from some political parties to some media, is that here corruption is ruling the fate of our common destiny.

This is not true, and what is most important in this barometer, where Albania is ranked much better in terms of its willingness to fight corruption than not a few countries of the European Union, is that the barometer is built, is put in place by an organization that has a great reputation worldwide, and also by taking into account our public opinion, so by referring to a silent majority that does not have the opportunity to be in the pulpit of parliament, it doesn’t have the opportunity to be in the stands of the parties, or on top of houses or digital rooms that produce digital news and disinformation, but that feels and understands that in Albania there is today a real positive willingness to move to a new phase of our overall economic and social development, by reforming the country also in view of a strategic and long-lasting war against corruption.

Let’s never forget that people have no power to corrupt modern systems built on stable institutions. While backward systems and weak and unstable institutions have the power to corrupt almost anyone whom they put under their roof. And for this reason, we strongly believe in modernization, I believe a lot in modernization as a long-term answer in a war that is endless and ongoing, and that will never end even in the most developed countries. But, of course, it is citizens and the quality with which citizen are served that make the difference. In this regard, the quality with which citizens are served in the developed countries of the European Union, which we need to emulate, cannot be compared to the quality with which citizens are served in our country, where there is extremely much to do.

Thank you very much!