Remarks by Prime Minister Edi Rama to Parliament:

We just attended a heated race for the Democratic Party’s leadership via the social media networks, with the Democratic Party leader and the long-time leader each racing via their own digital device who shouts more insults, slanders and drags the others’ name through the mud. And, unfortunately, they left before listening what they deserve to listen, either in this case, or what hides in plain sight behind this new hysteria attempt.

Yesterday, the Minister of Interior spoke up, saying indeed nothing new, and reiterated what has already been said again and again over the past 15 years. While the media, unfortunately, reported the rediscovery as a major breakthrough without telling their viewers and readers that this issue has surfaced not once, but many times.

Such an issue has resurfaced and has been raised whenever Fatmir Xhafaj, the government or the entire Socialist Party parliamentary group had to be attacked at sensitive moments for these who are seeking to sell and retell an old story as if it was a new breakthrough. This story was told most recently by the Democratic Party-leaning media when our efforts to reform the justice system were at their peak.

This fact is publicly known, not only to the Albanian citizens who are always forced to focus their attention on this hurry-scurry, but also to our international partners. If this whole uproar appears to hold true about any wrongdoing by the Interior Minister, I believe no Albanians would find my conviction unreasonable that our friend, the protagonist of our public life, the US ambassador, would have spoken about this issue, the European Union would have issued a statement since no case has gone unverified by the Delegation.

They haven’t spoken and have nothing to say because it is a known fact that although the media saw the news as an opportunity for a scoop it actually does not incriminate neither our government nor the Interior Minister himself.

It is regrettable, but the sludge and quagmire we writhe in every Thursday and the politics writhes every single day due to these people who are having serious troubles and that’s why they cry out, but the only reliable reference it is those who monitor, supervise, judge and would not hesitate to criticize us, sometimes justly and sometimes unjustly.

And how is it possible that the U.S. Ambassador did not referred at all to what they call “a sensational discovery”, but he was forced to issue a public statement on another fact, about which they accused us and me personally and that was the removal of the chief prosecutor of the Serious Crimes Prosecution Office?

Can any of you ever imagine that our dear friend, the omnipresent in all our processes to bring justice in this country would have been forced to issue a statement should the opposition’s claims about the removal of the head of the Serious Crimes Prosecution Office contained even a single thread of truth would have come out our dear friend?!

No way!

Why this fact is revealed today?

This is the question.

Why this fact is revealed today?

Of course there are reasons that have been, are and will continue to be there as long as these (opposition) will continue to be them, because they lack vision, they lack program, ideas and leadership and have nothing to do with the citizens’ woes, except their own troubles.

But this fact has been again revealed today just for another reason, which is highly topical. These are seeking to press ahead with what they have already launched and they are seeking to hamper the opening of EU accession negotiations, by keeping on poisoning and manipulating as much as possible the blood and mind of whoever in every parliament of those countries that are key to making a decision and that may be interested in saying “no.”

Over the past six years, neither formal, nor informal request has been issued from the authorities of the country where the alleged incident has taken place.  Not a single request. Why this is revealed today if there is no request, if there is no government-related or personal responsibility for the Interior Minister, and if it is all about his brother, in a system where everyone is held responsible and accountable individually before the law?

Because Albania should be attacked whenever possible.

This newly reinvented file, at a time it has been widely reported on TV, is now being distributed in English and I was told about what they claim on TV studious by those who have read it in English. And they asked me how it was possible and why today, at a time when we expect Albania, the Albanian politics to support our claim and request to open the EU accession negotiations we put forward a file that has been already put forward long ago, about a fact we already know, an issue we have thoroughly analyzed?

How is it possible?

This was a question raised by foreigners to provide answers about our brothers by blood.

This attempt also contains another element that will become more rampant until the decision is made. Be prepared for more and more surprises, repacked and reworded statements and defamations as part of smearing and mudslinging campaign with some sling as mud as possible at Albania, but at the end of day, the foreigners are not there to find out who is best, who is the bad, who is corrupt, who is honest, who is the angel and who is the devil. The foreigners will stand by and see what is going on in Albania!

Those, who for their own reasons and not for ours, are sceptical or opposed the European Union’s further enlargement and let no opportunity escape to deliver their speeches and remarks on TV studios – actually they can’t do it on TV because they are not so important people – but they appear up and down corridors to vent their anger without going over details to find out what is going on.

Our whole efforts have been focusing not only to discuss the essence of the processes ahead, but to explain again and again that these stories are indeed pure inventions by this “cauldron” here that is called the Parliament of Albania, making all of us be alike.

It is an incredible fact how they tarnish Albania’s image abroad!

They know what I do also know, the Minister of Foreign Affairs knows, what many others already that the opposition has lost its battle in Germany. They know it and that’s why I would like to address a question to the one who never answers questions. I am not going to ask him about multiplying seven by seven, because I know his answer is “42”. But I am going to ask the one who claims he seeking to lobby for Albania whether he has the courage to take the floor and say what he told the members of the Dutch fact-finding mission over lunch when he visited them without a due invitation?

What did he tell them?

Meanwhile, for the sake of truth, Mrs. Tabaku and Mrs. Gjosha took a correct public stance. But what did my dear, but hopeless friend Lulzim Basha told them?

One thing I wanted to tell them and I am telling them today; Now that the fight against cannabis cultivation is a thing of the past, they are now focusing their claims over the alleged cocaine trafficking. The history of the cocaine haul recently seized by Albanian law enforcement agencies did not start yesterday and the arrest of the suspect is related to a much earlier story, the Serious Crimes Prosecution Office should have had investigated earlier.

We are not like these ones. We don’t receive information from institutions and then take the floor here to make accusations. We wait. We show great patience even by paying the cost of public perception of us being all the same, that we are all alike, and that this government and this ruling majority was the problem, the cannabis seeds surfaced after we won elections in 2013, cannabis cultivation and trafficking became a phenomenon during our term in office.

We declared the war the previous government and other governments never dared to. We eradicated this phenomenon. We paid the cost, since we had our successes and failures, but I am deeply confident that the truth will out.

The truth about the cocaine trafficking, the truth about the operation that led to the arrest of a leading exponent, who is suspected also of other drug smuggling cases, the truth about obstructing the investigation by the Serious Crimes Prosecution Office will definitely out one way or another, as it has always happened.

My everyday great concern is not what happens in regards to the domestic public opinion due to this mud that is being slung each day from their scurrilous remarks, but the end of June. And unfortunately, our biggest problems are not the sceptical within the European Union, but the mud right here among us and those we should convince to open the accession negotiations. We should just take care to clean the mud which is being exported right from here about something which is not an internal issue of the Socialist Party, which is not an achievement of our government, which is not related to the fate of the next election, but with the destiny of the future generations.

We should work about something which is related to our history, whether Albania will make the great historic stride and joins the club of EU member states by opening the negotiations, or whether Albania will remain waiting behind the door until it opens again later.

These – at least some of them, because the only thing most of them do is just use their smart phones and digital devices to register Sali and Lulzim while racing for the best hatchet-man prize – know well that next year will be tougher. Elections for the next European Parliament will be held in all member states next year. The anti-European and populist parties, more rigid forces could grow in number next year. All European Union institutions will be recreated next year.

They know everything, but they have never had interest in Albania, even when between Sude and the children of this country chose Sude, even when between progress of the Albanian economy and their electoral gambling they opted for the latter, creating a huge hole in 2013 and when we took over the government, the former Prime Minister used to say Albania was to follow the Greek scenario soon, because he knew well what he had done.

They have no interest in Albania, let alone today when the revolution in the justice system has started and will no longer stop.

Whatever is happening today is the result of all these.

Meanwhile, it has always and it is clear to us. We want a justice system to be fair when it comes to our opponents and unjust when it comes to ourselves.

We want to ensure everyone has access to equal justice.

Above all, we want to open negotiations, to guarantee once again that this country does not move backward. I am confident we will succeed. I am confident that we will overcome the huge hills and mountains of mud they create as we confidently move forward on the path towards the EU membership.

I am deeply confident. However, I want to share with everyone the fact that this major national objective is being mainly challenged by people here within our family as Albanians. It is exhausting to think that the highest obstacle to this strategic achievement for all Albanians, not only for Albanians of Albania, is to be found right here. It is neither in Berlin nor in Paris, it is neither in The Hague nor is it anywhere else in the European Union.

It’s really an embarrassment, a sense of shame, not just when thinking, but experiencing and tasting the whole locally produced mud and finding out that none of these MPs, either German, or Dutch, or whatever they are, lag far behind the Albanian opposition MPs in this process. They are on their own right. These are today the pioneers of a historic injustice to Albania and all the children of this country, including their own children.