Prime Minister Edi Rama’s remarks at parliament’s session on dismissal of Ilir Meta from office of the President of Republic

“Never interfere with an enemy while he is in the process of destroying himself,” Napoleon Bonaparte has once said.

But we have convened this session today not to stop our opponent. As an opponent to this government, Ilir Meta should not be stopped from his blind and self-destructing, unique yet truly sad march in this country’s political history.

Politically, he significantly eases our position in the eyes of the people, because people want to see now the naked the truth of Ilir Meta’s fierce animosity towards our governing majority. It is a hostility fuelled by the despair of the embarrassing defeat of the anti-national plan to blow up the elections, in a bid aimed at taking justice hostage and blocking, possibly indefinitely, the opening of the accession negotiations with the European Union. But I will comment on that in a while.

In the meantime, I have heard desperate statements by the leaders of opposition seeking to find an excuse for their defeat and the desperate claims to blame us regarding the low voter turnout in local polls and the preliminary report by the ODIHR election observation mission.

Fortunately, I have repeatedly stated during the election campaign that their attempts to destroy the election process by resorting to violence would result to nil, yet it wouldn’t stop them to claim victory. I knew they will consider Albanian nationals living abroad, the Albanians in their own homes and on beach vacations as supporters of their imaginary revolution. The only thing I hadn’t think about was they would count them wrongly.

It could be no worse for the losers than to behave victoriously and it could be no better for the victors the fact that losers don’t want to figure out why they were defeated. This is a central premise that winners will keep winning, while losers will continue to lose.

“85% of the people refused Rama,” they claim. It is exactly those who say that Albanians have massively left Albania, yet this fact doesn’t hinder them to take into account every Albanian living abroad, starting those who joined the exodus of the ’90s and consider them as being here in Albania on June 30.

These are the ones who traditionally oppose inclusion of the emigrants’ vote in the Electoral Code, but I avail myself of the occasion to reiterate our conviction that emigrants should be granted the right to vote, starting with the next general elections and, regardless whether the street opposition wants or not, we will include the emigrant vote in the Electoral Code. I am looking forward to seeing the parliamentary opposition to agree on that.

However, the simple truth is that the voter turnout in the June 30 local polls has exceeded our expectations given the miserable atmosphere in which these elections took place. We have received a higher percentage of votes than 19.7 percent of the votes received by the winning coalition that governed Albania back in 2015. We have also gained a much larger number of votes for the mayoral candidates than any optimistic expectation we had in a race with half of them facing no rival candidate. If we are to compare the number of votes we received four years ago when we nominated joint candidates with the Socialist Movement for Integration, this number is 4 percent lower. If it was to be a normal electoral race with opponents in every municipality and without high criminal pressure over voters for months on, it would undoubtedly be much higher than that of 2015.

Reading the totally normal voters turnout in this elections as a popular rejection of us, and seeing our election results as a shrinkage of the ruling majority, it means you are not aware of what are you talking about, and worse, you don’t know what is about to follow.

Indeed, either the election conduct, or our results, but also the opposition leadership’s political illiteracy and chronic blindness clearly show why that opposition stands no chance of returning to a possible victory in the 2021 parliamentary elections.

Their chaotic and confusing state is inconsolable even when they claim that the ODIHR preliminary report had confirmed the opinion of the boycotting opposition and the protesting President about these polls. The preliminary report has indeed correctly reflected a totally normal electoral process, where the President’s abnormal conduct and grave violation of the constitution has badly affected the process.

The widespread lack of public confidence in the electoral process underlined in the OSCE/ODIHR preliminary report is an indisputable fact, which indeed was a result of political aggression and the continuing threat of violence over entire process, as well as certainly due to Ilir Meta’s violent interference in the process with his scandalous anti-election decree.

How the public confidence in the electoral process was supposed not to be widely affected by the monthly and daily threats and warnings that the elections were not to be held? The threats also discouraged and stunned even our own electoral structures in the territory for a long time, let alone the political supporters, or the undecided voters.

How could this confidence be supposed to be preserved intact and deeply shocked following the logical and physical clashes that Ilir Meta provoked by sudden deletion of the election date, or its appearance as an unconstitutional autumn test?

The electoral administration’s political imbalance and the need to depoliticize the election commission are uncontested facts highlighted by the report. The political imbalance was a direct reflection of the absurdity of these elections boycotted by the main opposition, while the politicization of commissions is a widely known fact and underlined in previous ODIHR reports too.

I would like to state it clearly today. This was the last time the elections were administered by political parties. Whether the election boycotters want it or not, we will depoliticize the election administration, I believe with the support of the parliamentary opposition.The ODIHR election observation mission has noted problems regarding verification of addresses data. This aspect too requires attention from the Electoral Reform Commission in order to improve this process, but the report itself clearly states that this was largely caused by the fact that the voter lists that were initially posted to the CEAZ, and VCs were removed from the opposition-run municipalities in the middle of the election process. Do you remember how in the inertia of the imaginary revolution, the Revolutionary mayors assaulted the voter lists and schools, claiming they were defending Mr. President’s revolutionary imagination. Consequently, the revolution hard-liners restricted the voters’ ability to verify their data.

There is also another issue with the opposition acting like a drowning man clinging to a blade of grass, even clinging to a report’s excerpt, saying that CEC interpreted the law creatively. This is also true. But just as true as the fact that in the face of the creative despair of the evil front against these elections, CEC was left no other choice but to resist by defending the spirit of the Constitution and the Electoral Code, to save elections from the announced destruction, when the 30 June has survived the most fierce and shameful anti-democratic aggression the political establishment of over the past 30 years has ever launched against the public interest, the freedom of elections and the right to elect, as well as against the national objective of Albania’s integration process in the European family. Ilir Meta, as I said from the onset, to us would be politically an adversary that should not be stopped from making further mistakes.

So, mentally imbalanced due to the fear from justice, confused and perplexed because of the defeat of anti-national operation he led together with three other rebellious and ridiculous knights of the imaginary apocalypse, in his impotence, he is today indeed a precious political asset to this governing majority. With that kind of threatening figurine in the President’s office, the most unsatisfied voters would not dare to cast their vote elsewhere in the next elections due to happen after two years. While we would be more tolerable despite our mistakes, since if compared to that meaningful embodiment of the opposition destructiveness in the Presidency we would be most excellent ones in the eyes of the people.

However, we can’t use the head of state as a scarecrow to scare the dissatisfied voters and we are obliged to stop Ilir Meta from making more mistakes, because the state’s dignity to us is much more important than any party interest or electoral calculation.

Ilir Meta should be investigated and punished by this Parliament and our reaction towards him as members of this Assembly should be frontal, regardless our political differences and on behalf of the constitution, the parliamentary democracy and dignity of the Albanian state itself. In this aspect, the Parliament’s fundamental principles that bring us together as the people’s representatives is a common denominator that should naturally unite us in taking decisions and actions, regardless of any political interest that naturally divides us.

Ilir Meta is not simply a notorious government opponent. He today is the open enemy to the Constitution of Albania itself.

He is no longer merely the inspirer of the destructive offensive against elections and justice. He is the declared enemy to the Parliament of Albania itself.

He is no longer simply the politician scared to the bone because of the justice system reform. He today is the embodiment of the fury of those frightened of justice, who expands the range of his aggression to American and European friends and partners, shaming us all, we here as MPs, you as a citizen, as a people and the state.

Can the today’s Albania, a NATO member nation, an EU candidate, afford having a head of state who looks like a comedian who imitates the President of the Republic?; a head of state who when seriously speaking makes you laugh and when speaking humorously makes everyone cry; a head of state who thinks of himself as Vojo Kushi wearing a tie jumping over the roof of the EU Embassy and imagines the US Embassy as the cannon in front of which he thrust his body like the hero Mic Sokoli, but in the version of someone wearing swim or bathing suit?!

How can Albania of today have a head of state who states in a press conference he is ready to undergo the mental health test, which nobody has asked him for, although everybody has wondered whether this man is really out his mind. This question leads to nowhere; it might even lead to a wrong direction. The true illness of the head of state is that of Dostoevsky’s character who lies to himself and listens to his own lie in order to lie others.

As such he is not a liar, but he is sick.

The greatest moral challenge in life – Dostoevsky says – it is not how lie others, but, above all, not to lie to yourself, because such a man – like Ilir Meta – comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others around him.

But if Ilir Meta can afford himself to confuse whole world with his delirium between the frenzy imagination from the fear of a man, who when travelling to Tropoja thinks he is going through the notorious Spaç prison and the political and social reality, an imagination that reminds him actions and events towards which he reacts through unconstitutional actions and comic shows that humiliate the institution of the President of the Republic, then this Parliament can’t afford itself to take a blind eye to this source of political, institutional destabilization, social danger and international comedy.

Ilir Meta, for the sake of truth, has violated the Constitution more than once.

More than once he has attempted to destabilize the government, by arbitrary hampering it, or by brutally refusing to decree cabinet members.

More than once he has threatened the authority of the Assembly of Albania by politically commenting or irresponsibly returning legislation approved by this Parliament, let alone his frequent statements calling this Parliament illegitimate, or issuing warnings hinting that he might order disperse of the Parliament.

More than once, he has broken the balance of the figure of the President of the Republic and has surpassed his constitutional role, playing roles and games that a president has never afforded to do, not only here in Albania, but throughout the history of parliamentary democracies.

This kind of President has gone too far with his vandalism against the state logic, as much as that his predecessor, a party sergeant with a poor mind, looks like Jefferson today if compared to Ilir Meta.

But this time, Ilir Meta has surpassed his own self together with the last limit of our patience not to react institutionally.  This time he has played with fire and has done utmost that the hideous, savage, shameless and unpardonable arson attack plan against Albania was not to fail.

Ilir Meta brutally interfered in the midst of the electoral campaign by issuing a mad decree, a political Molotov anger and institutional insanity to kindle the extinguishing fire of protests of blind opposition despair. With his decree to cancel the elections he incited spread of violence in the territories of the opposition-run municipalities and inspired act of vandalism against the electoral infrastructure, from the criminal arson attacks on school buildings to the grotesque uprising of gate locks.

He turned from a problematic President of Albania into a pathetic tribune of Haxhi Qamili-like movement against the elections, insulting Albania’s friends too through his reactions towards the diplomatic missions in Albania and the ridiculous letters sent to the high-level international authorities, just like being the digital citizen who forward complaints to doctor (former Prime Minister).

Dismissal of this character from the office of the head of state, who restored Haxhi Qamili and his proverbial seal of a coffee import and export company to the scene of our history is a mandatory move of this Parliament and it is the obligation of every lawmaker, who has not forgotten the oath before the Assembly.

Ilir Meta has not only filled the cup to the brim, but he has overfilled it and continues to overflow it on daily basis, providing us a reason to feel sorry about him as a man, disgusted with him as a politician and alarmed by him as the holder of the high stamp that has lost the right to bear.

But of course, unlike Ilir Meta, who has jumped over the state as if jumping on an enemy tank and his using his presidential signature as a bomb to blow it up, we can’t use the Assembly’s absolute power over the President of the Republic.

By law, the President can only be dismissed after the parliamentary inquiry commission we vote today carries out the constitutional obligation to investigate into the facts, hear relevant evidence, and reports to parliament the investigation’s findings into the grave violation of the Constitution.

Unlike Ilir Meta who opted for the example of the destructive force for narrow political and personal interests, we have chosen the power of legal and democratic example to defend the national interest and the dignity of the Albanian state. Being proud and firm in this fair and clear choice, in this case too, we will continue to respect the Constitution, the law and the state.

Concluding this speech, I would like to appeal to all lawmakers to back establishment of a special inquiry commission, and exactly in the name of the national interest and the dignity of this Assembly, I issue a public appeal to Ilir Meta, inviting him to reflect and pull himself together within the framework of the responsibilities and his powers.

I call on him to stop any assault on the United States and European Union diplomatic missions in Albania, to stop any attack on the Parliament, whose legitimacy can be threatened by no presidential rifle of whatsoever, just like there is no Molotov-like decree that shortens the term of parliament.

I urge him to give up his illegal political activity against the government of the Republic of Albania, towards which he should act as stipulated by the Constitution, and not obey to the inner voices of the imaginary reality, where he has been recently transcended.

It would be wise for him to stop vilifying the historical figures of this country’s history, since parallelisms between them and his figure as President just misinform the younger generations and further promote aggressiveness of ignorance towards the society and the rule of law. However, this is a friendly comment.

Wishing the parliamentary inquiry commission every success and fruitful work and wishing that every lawmaker backs establishment of such commission in the name of this parliamentary republic, so that none of you plunges himself or herself into the quagmire where Ilir Meta wants to sink this Parliament, I thank you all for your attention.