Remarks by Prime Minister Edi Rama at the 30th Anniversary of the Albanian Constitutional Court:

 

Honourable Madam Speaker,

Ladies and gentlemen,

The Constitutional Court commemorates the 30th anniversary of its founding today. It is undoubtedly a very significant anniversary, so important that you deemed it appropriate for the state’s top authorities, including me in my capacity as the Prime Minister, to join it. I appreciate this invitation and I came, but I would apologize in advance that I won’t be able to attend after delivering this speech, for a reason that the Speaker already knows, and I thank you for the invitation, with a small nuance: asking for a speech, you have put me in a dilemma and a rather special challenge.

Although the occasion is a festive one, the exercise is delicate and the scene rather unusual: the Head of the executive power in front of a panel of lawyers and judges, i.e. the judiciary, without forgetting the ears and eyes of foreign diplomats, who when it comes to justice they seem to feel not like strangers at all in its territories – they can even specifically afford to share with the public the joy or the dismay at the court rulings when they wish to do so, something that for me and for us, the authorities of this country, is not advisable at all, let alone imitable.

Delivering a highly commendatory and linear speech here, as the occasion demands to some extent and as tradition the tradition has it, is for me beyond the limits of the possible for me, a critical speech remains as inadvisable as the imitation of diplomats, when they publicly express excitement about the court rulings. So I would rather try to avoid this tempting “trap” as much as possible.

We celebrate today, I repeat, the 30th Anniversary of the Constitutional Court. Indeed, the occasion is more significant than that. In my view, what is being celebrated today represents the very origin of constitutionalism and its idea as a guarantee of individual freedoms. After a long era of totalitarian repression, Albania founded a Constitutional Court, before giving itself a formally codified Constitution, approved as the foundation of the new state through approved procedures and certified instruments and thanks to the cross-party consensus of the political community, and blessed by the citizens’ vote.

In the chaos and mayhem of the early years of transition from dictatorship to freedom, in search for democracy, the Constitutional Court assumed the burden of devising constitutionalism as a universal value, as an idea and horizon, although in absolute solitude, deprived of any earlier tradition, of any coercive and unifying legal tool and unaccustomed to the basics, let alone the sophistications of the fundamental rights and freedoms, the guarantee of which was and remains the key to its legitimacy.

It was precisely at that time, when the then humble political and legal glossary, was enriched with some terms and institutes, completely unknown to the majority, but vital to the sustainable development of democracy in the country: constitutionality, the rule of law, the separation of powers and balance between the branches of state, the rights and fundamental freedoms and so on and so forth. Such notions would become the permeating thread of Albanian political, institutional and public life, mainly as new bodies in the entirety of the arsenal of public discourse, than as the embodiment of the regulation of institutional life and political activity.

This is how a kind of “scarecrow”, the “guardian of the Constitution,” was introduced into our new democratic coexistence, as the Constitutional Court began to be labelled a bit fiercely.

Though it had yet to become a secondary source of law, it became its embodiment, became the unpromulgated Constitution itself, although was still being written. Until it acquired a physiognomy adapted to its fundamental mission and as an example of the guarantor role, the Constitutional Court was hardened during a relentlessly delusional transition.

It had to be the “guardian” of a non-existing constitution and then become the “bodyguard” of a Constitution that had just begun to stutter.

However, despite the ever-existing deforming inclinations for political and pragmatist interests, thanks to the Constitutional Court we now have a new and dynamic tradition of the separation of powers; a parliamentary life with almost fully accepted rules; an independence of the judiciary that is being manifested even in the form of arbitrariness, but no longer in the form of submission to power; a stability of the legal system and also a more or less protection of basic human rights and so on.

Like a blind man walking on flailing feet in the vast nature around him, the Constitutional Court also walked through a kind of post-communist jungle, where the self-limitation of powers was a concept inaccessible to the thread of our common and individual reason. It is for this reason that even today, throughout its 30-year existence, the Constitutional Court is a edifice with its shades, controversial rulings, but at the same time with excellent and even glorious ones, just as sometimes with unjustifiable stains. But is there anyone who can forget the decision on the so-called maritime border agreement, signed by the executive power in disregard of both national and popular sovereignty?

An epic decision in its still early history, 30 years ago today, for the history of a Constitutional Court in the continent we live in, 30 years are just a short fragment of time, a time that, however, the Constitutional Court has outlined as mitigating the most negative effects of the long transition, but also as a factor of prolonging the transition.

A row impression has been actually created, suggesting that the entire activity of the Constitutional Court consists of a back-and-forth passes between the Court and the Assembly and, until most recently,  – God forbid it – the President, with returned decisions and decrees on rewriting laws on issues in the focus of the debate among the political forces awaiting an arbitration that, although with legal contours, inevitably focuses on purely political reasoning or sometimes simply regulating political balances.

The Constitutional Court is not to be blamed for this – to avoid any misunderstanding – but it is the abuse and misuse of its entire activity by third who get away with their responsibilities by failing to find  consensus or intermediate ways to reach an agreement, but calling the Constitutional Court into the ring instead, which for the sake of the inescapable obligation to do justice, is forced into debates that are hindered by direct or indirect political pressure, and rulings, sometimes crushing for those who try to read them in full, failing to strike that golden balance that should inspire, through the transcendence of wisdom, the pure reason of a Constitutional Court.

I cannot help, despite all the effort, but draw attention to a fresh recent event, a unique one in this country’s entirety of the public and political activity over these 30 years, which is not absolutely poor with unique manifestations of deviations, the effort and the strike by a political party by referring to the Constitutional Court a decision made by the government to enforce a law adopted by the Parliament of Albania to punish abuses of building permits by builders who, in their greediness, have made final punishment impossible.

That a government decision is referred to the Constitutional Court is an act that leaves you stunned, but for a political will to stand up against a government decision to defend flagrant violations of the law of a very special nature, embodied in illegally-built additional construction floors, this is a new climax that illustrates even better than previous climaxes, the ones I was trying to say.

The legitimate question one would ask is how we can be mutually aware that not every conflict of a political and social nature should be resolved by the Constitutional Court or, on the other hand, how can we avoid referring to the Constitutional Court for many things, which, in normal countries, are resolved in other ways. Let’s not contribute and not put the Constitutional Court in a position to contribute to further prolonging the conflicts.

The Constitution belongs to everyone. To put it in the words of the “Rolling Stones”, the Constitutional Court is only “the Singer, not the Song.”

The Constitution is now defended by an entire army, starting from the ordinary citizen, to the Head of State, without forgetting the civil society, the academic world, the commitments and various multilateral institutions of international politics.

Striking a political and social balance without ever usurping the role of the legislator, highlighting the limits of institutional interactions where they fizzle out or become invisible, protecting the individual in the face of the potentially threatening force of exceeding the constitutional right of the authorities, are a challenge of self-control, self-restraint and legitimacy on the part of the Constitutional Court.

The implementation of the justice reform is clearly and painfully proving to all of us, how afflicted is a system to include independent judges with moral integrity and professionalism. These qualities are much sought today with an almost desperate insistence among judges who are being selected under a new evaluation system.

On this 30th anniversary, I would like to honour a name that you all know, he is no longer among us, Jusuf Vrioni, one of the most educated Albanians and undoubtedly one of the most professional lawyers ever living in this country, with whom I have had the privilege of enjoying a very friendly relationship and whom I recall more and more every day, since the justice reform was adopted.

Jusuf Vrioni was a politically-persecuted individual, brutally tortured in the communist-era prisons, isolated for many years and obviously, he was someone who was looking forward to the end of that regime and in one of the many discussions after the fall of the regime, I asked him: “Am I wrong or you seem not to be as enthusiastic as you should about the arrival of democracy.”

Jusuf smiled and said: “Democracy has yet to come. Freedom only has arrived. The effort to bring democracy starts now.”

Today I would have grasped what he said immediately. But back then, I had to ask him again what he meant by that? He told me: “I am very happy that unlike many of my fellow political prisoners, who departed before seeing freedom coming, I saw it and can experience the end of that regime. You know it took a long time for me. I hope you will live long and see democracy coming too.”

I was baffled and even more confused and he told me: “Freedom is the opportunity to elect, the opportunity to be elected, the opportunity to draft laws, debate them in Parliament, the opportunity to do what you want and say what you think, while democracy means a court and the judge. In order for democracy to be built, it is not enough for judges not to be communists, it is not enough for them to be either honest or independent, but they must also be professionally competent.” This means that they must not only have moral integrity, but also professional integrity and vice versa. The moral integrity may help them to realize that professional perfection is not attainable.

A judge is as independent and enjoys as much moral and professional integrity as his intellectual and social background allows, therefore a court is as independent and competent as its judges.

Thank you very much!