The debate over this topic is not worth it. It’s a debate missing the two debating sides discussing the path of reason, but it features one side walking down a path of reason and another side, which, as it always does, does not assume responsibility for what it says.
While the explanation is worth it since this is first toll road experience for our country, the Europe’s and the region’s only country that has never had such experience to date. That’s why it’s worth explaining.
The decision to set a tariff on the users of the Highway of Nation – and it is not a tax, but a tariff on the road users – primary originated in 2010.
It was exactly in 2010 when the then Prime Minister launched the initiative to open this process and has publicly said – something he has rarely done in his career – what today – just like always in his career – he denies, that “we built the road, but we can’t afford its maintenance.”
However, this is not to merely speak for the sake of saying something, because the inability to maintain has brought about significant degradations to this road axis through all these years. We all are witnessing that, from time to time and systematically, the TV screens show manifestations of the degradation of that axis due to landslides, the down slope movement of material, or surface cracking.
The story is quite clear. After the previous government came to the terms with the highway, which is yet to complete since it is not complete, cost the Albanian taxpayers around 1.4 billion as it was not constructed as it should, the process of launching the toll road failed just like any other job done by the previous government and nobody made a bid. Later, we resumed the process and we did so in 2014 shortly after taking office in accordance with an order issued by the then Minister of Transport, Mr. Haxhinasto, marking the beginning of a work that took two years and that was carried out by local experts and the international expertise and was ultimately finalized in December 2016.
The process completed in December 2016 and no debate took place. Saying this I’m not taking into account the Socialist Movement for Integration (SMI) since SMI thinks accordingly when part of the government and it thinks totally different on same matter while in opposition, but I’m talking about us all. Later, we pressed ahead according to the process launched by the Minister of Transport, Mr. Haxhinasto and concluded by the Minister of Transport, Mr. Dervishaj. I pay deserved respect to both ministers for their commitment to the process, which has been completed very professionally. If the road was not blocked even for a single second during the winter, although previously it used to be blocked after the first snowflakes fall, this is because it is related to this process and the contracted company that has embarked on the road maintenance operations.
There could not be 1000 solutions to the issue of the road. There only two solutions: either all taxpayers or the road users only will cover all maintenance-related cost for this highway. The concept that all taxpayers should pay for the roads maintenance operations has been also recently questioned in the only European country where no toll roads are yet applied and this country is neither more nor less but the Europe’s most developed nation, Germany. In Germany too, a debate is going on over setting a certain tariff burden on the users of roads.
On the other hand, there is no point to engage in discussion about the Albanian state budget potential in relation to the necessity to ensure the long-term security and long-term sustainability of this strategic road axis. Just take a look at the tariff rates applied in the region to understand that there is absolutely nothing special here. The logic is pretty simple, it is the road and its users. Consequently, the tariffs vary because it depends on the number of users and maintenance needs.
That is a road – a strategic axis of special importance – with a low traffic volume for most of the time and it has high traffic intensity during a certain period, the year’s shortest, but its maintenance is based on the annual total flow volume.
If the neighbouring Macedonia for years now charges a toll fee ranging from 0.5 to 5.5 euros, always depending on the road axis and number of users, if Montenegro charges a 2.5 euro fee to pass through a tunnel shortening the distance between from Podgorica to Bar and Ulqin, and if a 4.5-euro fee is charged for the Tivat road segment only; if Greece has not highway without a toll fee which ranges from 3 to 14 euros; if the toll fees in Serbia vary from 1.5 to 6 euros and so on and so for, including the road from Plloca near Dubrovnik to Zagreb with a 35-euro toll fee, then it is very clear that we are facing nothing unusual, strange and unreasonable thing.
Let’s return this road axis compared to all other axis I just mentioned, except for the incredibly high capital cost – we all know the story and we also know the defendants who are today in this hall just like we know many other misdeeds – the highway is yet to complete. It is a road constructed without conducting the required geological studies first, a road that lacks two lanes along its first 25.6 km segment between Milot and Rreshen. The 61-km second segment lacks the geotechnical protective measures for escarpments in order to prevent land sliding , whereas viaducts and bridges are yet to complete along the road’s third segment linking Kalimash-Morinë. All this is estimated to cost another 200 million euro without taking into account all damages caused over the years. And if the cost of routine winter maintenance and management of the tunnel alone costs 5.3 million euros, then instead of waiving the ragged flag of a pervert patriotism, which has nothing to do with the patriotism and the strategic interests in all aspects it would be better that an alternative formula is proposed.
If the alternative formula is the renowned formula of the previous government, that is start the road and leave it incomplete, without taking into account the maintenance cost at all, then keep that formula for yourselves because, to us, this is not a solution formula but the formula of doing things poorly. This is the formula you have applied anytime you were given the opportunity to take the state’s keys in every sector.
Without going over details, I would like to highlight what it represents a concrete concern and what people should listen. The Minister raised a concern we have repeatedly expressed during all the discussions with international expertise regarding the local residents in the area and the answer – which has also been a lesson to us and it will be a lesson to all of those who take over the responsibility to talk about it – is: in no country across the planet there exists a theory suggesting that local residents should be exempted from paying the tariff, because these residents are also the road users.
If another toll road is to be imposed on, let say, the Tirana-Durres highway, are the local residents also to be excluded from paying the fee? If the same happens in another road segment, will they be excluded too? In other words, this means that all people across Albania should be excluded from paying? It can’t happen.
What happens outside and what is going to happen here since you speak on behalf of the poor, although you have nothing in common, but I’m addressing to those who are listening to us now, and not you because you are on your hobbyhorse again riding increasingly down and with your heads down. We cannot stop you from plunging over the precipice, but I would like the people to know that the 120 thousand euros the company will give away in funds to the local government to use it relax the burden, or completely remove this burden from anyone who uses public or private transport by buses or vans, so they have to pay no fee and there is no burden on anyone who will use this transport. The company’s payment to the municipalities is to compensate all the operators that provide transport service, whether public or private operators that operate public transport dedicated lines. No public transport buses and vans will be obliged to pay the toll fee.
Than what payment is to be added?
This kind of story you are seeking to conjure up is illogical. Meanwhile, the contract stipulates that the tariff for the so-called frequent road user will be set through negotiations between the government, the relevant ministry and the concessionary in the first six months after the toll road introduction. In other words, if someone uses the road to travel frequently back and forth between Kukes and Tirana, then the frequent users will be offered cards to pay lower fare that the fix tariff.
These are the solutions applied around the world and are going to be applied here too. There is no invention, there is no harassment and there is no threat to anyone. On the contrary, thanks to this process we will finally have a true Highway of Nation, which will gradually complete and will not be damaged from the slope failures and rock sliding every season, while the company will invest 45 million euros in the first four years alone. Likewise, another amount of 54 million euros will support the road rehabilitation and maintenance operations over the coming years.
Meanwhile, investment in road maintenance is underway. The total cost – including the routine maintenance operations, winter maintenance – something of a novelty in our country – instead of the drainage board bulldozers or army trucks racing to clear the road snow, the maintenance operations will be carried out just like in any normal country – is 160 million euros.
If there is any professor in this room – since I know only one of them, but you may have other professors within your ranks – who would calculate another formula for 160 million euros to ensure safety, normal mobility, regardless of temperature, rainfall and snow, not on this road, but on another road, please tell us. Just please do not be ridiculous, because you are very ridiculous when suggesting to tackle all the problems of the country by terminating Vilma’s contract. This is another story.
With regards to the incinerators, I’m not being dragged into the debate, because we offer a diametrically different approach to waste management. You governed the country for a quarter of a century, and, I don’t know for how many years long, but you had a friendly, a consensual relation with the waste, because waste, the uncontrolled constructions and ugliness do not impress you much, but give you a sense of comfort and normality. You don’t feel comfortable at all in a country where waste, illegal buildings and ugliness are not to be found. That’s why you consider a crime any investment aimed at cleaning up Albania, to collect and process waste, to curb illegal constructions, to maintain roads, to fight off the ugliness as a whole.
I do understand although I consider nothing criminal seeing you to get out of this stage of understanding the landscape of the country you live in, which is a barbaric phase, and enter the phase of civilization where we all cohabit. You live this civilization physically, but not spiritually and mentally, while we live spiritually and mentally. That’s why you are so aggressive when a trash-littered ditch on the way from the airport in Tirana is cleaned up and trees are planted along. That’s why you are turned into the enemy of vegetation and archrival enemies of cleanliness.
This is completely understandable. That’s why you have become a biodegradable force and are therefore constantly biodegrading day after day in the incinerator of the Albanian electorate. That’s why the next election will mark another stage of your biodegradation.
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Of course, if we start from the premise that 7×7 will give you 42, then the whole logic of this arithmetic has nothing to do with the arithmetic of the figures we are discussing. What impresses me are two things, although nothing impresses me at my friend Lulzim since I know him well and I feel only sorry whenever he takes to floor, but I would like to repeat them for the sake of Albanian citizens. First of all, apart from being leader of the Democratic Party – no matter how bad he is leading the Democratic Party today – he has been also serving as Minister of Transport. The truth is that the Democratic Party is this country’s governing alternative and he is the leader of this alternative, albeit as a former Transport Minister, he doesn’t know what the circulation tax is. He took the floor saying the government should apply either the circulation tax, that is the national circulation tax, or toll fee on roads since there could not be both,
My question is: Do other countries, where road tariffs are imposed, apply also a circulation tax? I’m asking that because no circulation tax should be imposed behind this logic. My friend, you that take the floor showing my feet in a hole I’d dug in and saying “either this, or that, either 7×7=42, or there could be neither 7 nor 42.”
Lulzim, the circulation tax is a national tax applied in every country where road traffic exists, except for the countries of forest and pastoral nature where transport is carried out by donkeys. Only there no circulation tax is applied. The toll fee on road users is something completely different from the national circulation tax. This is one of the first lessons the professor should have been taught you prior to the “father’s” decision to appoint you to the post of the Transport Minister. Your father generously gave you the post, but you learned nothing.
Regarding what you said that I’m being drawn into a hole I dug myself, I would like to remind you of something. I haven’t open any hole in the state budget, and unlike what Digital Casandra predicted, it did not happen to fall with my feet in that hole that you opened, but instead we closed it.
Secondly, I haven’t opened any hole on the Nation’s Highway. The State Supreme Audit and the Albanian prosecution say it was you the one who opened it. Of course, the sic note documenting the then serious health condition makes you, despite you were found with your feet deeply plunged into that hole, your feet will actually fly to plunge into another pit, and I don’t intend to mention all these holes since they are in the public’s plain sight, but actually they have flown further towards the final pit. I did not open any hole like this neither to my country, nor to my party just like you have done to your party, which, for the sake of truth, as Sali himself thinks, has no connection with that story of dark pockets of the Russian oligarchs.
I have said many times, and will repeat it here, that there is a saying you have all been taught by your grandmothers or grandfathers, as just Sali has done, who in turn has also been taught by his grandmother, and I can confirm that my grandmother has taught me too that “He who laughs last, laughs best.” Don’t laugh at this story, because, frankly saying, I don’t wish you to taste it bitterly, much sooner rather than it seems today.
Of course, it is part of your functions within your party to laugh in a sign of solidarity with any foolishness that should be defended, or any hole that needs to be filled. This is functional. This is part of your tasks, just like the 10 tasks Sali had to perform while being a communist militant. These are the written and unwritten tasks also for every Democratic Party MP, will all involved in the monkey see, monkey do act of mimicry and will all and everyone giving this laugh, which actually bears the hallmark of Lulzim, whilst you are just a copy of his.
To conclude, I invite you not to confuse the circulation tax with the road users’ fee. There are two completely unrelated different things. Usually you use the expression “it has nothing to do with” when speaking about senseless things, but you should learn it that, if so, then, in any country – since every country applies a circulation tax, no toll fee would have been paid for the roads. Secondly, regarding the hole issue, when you tell others that they are drawing their feet to the pit, think it seriously and at least do not speed up your destiny you have written yourself, without even consulting your party, let alone me, because if you were to consult with me I would have told you will lose the elections, so don’t receive money from the Russians, because we need you for a much longer journey, but apparently you have cut it yourself, precisely because for you math suggesting that 7×7 gives 42.
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Churchill used to say “a fool is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” It means, a fool insists upon his stupidity and part of the problem is that, although a professor I know is among you, he still laughs and shakes his head, instead of telling his party’s leader that the circulation tax was amended by the previous Finance Minister – actually the only one who knew what he was speaking about anytime he used to take the floor here and most likely this is the reason you purged him from the party – and since then it was named as circulation tax. What matters is that the traffic or registration fee or the infrastructure as it is otherwise called in different countries, which is the same, is a national tax and has nothing to do with the payments of special road users. If that were the case then no country would have applied a road tariff.
Secondly, there is a national tax, there is no national tax, it has nothing to do with the payment, because, I repeat, registration, circulation or any other tax is also applied in Greece, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, all over Europe and meanwhile toll fees are applied on roads too.
Take a look also into the road maintenance funding in the 4-year state budget. The increase in the maintenance cost is related to the income you mentioned.
As for the parliamentary commission, there is no need for investigation committee into this case, since the issue is not just in the hands of the Albanian prosecution, and you know it quite well because it has overcome the internal borders. The problem is not a matter of transparency that should be carried out by CEC, or the investigation that should be conducted by the Albanian prosecution. It’s a far more complex problem. That’s why I suggested to your colleagues not to laugh as this is not to laugh and the only one who doesn’t laugh since he knows and understands it very well is the digital leader. The reason he doesn’t laugh is not the digital cauldron. He knows it clearly and therefore, like never before, I agree with him that the Democratic Party has nothing to do with this. Here you are in front of the Albanians completely on your own and you cannot escape this by calling for a parliamentary commission to investigate ABI Bank, the largest American investment in Albania, because would mean you could fool entire planet.
These stories suggesting that the investor who will build Vlora airport has been allegedly involved in privatizations in Russia, or the other has done business in Russia, are all worse than your mathematics. These are worse. Such nonsense would not be affordable even to a drunken coachman who might be deeply disappointed with the Democratic Party, let alone to the leader of the Democratic Party, the leader of the alternative, who takes the floor to challenge the government but he know what he’s talking about. The only premise in any discussion is, while I’m fooling entire Democratic Party leadership, why not try and fool all Albanians. But you can’t fool Albanians by talking nonsense. That’s why you have entered a process of biodegradation. Yes, you are biodegrading the party of alternative. The more you run to join the SMI, the more it shows the biodegradation situation your party is in.
