Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama during the meeting with family members and relatives of the victims of 21stJanuary in the Prime Ministry:
Dearest parents, children, spouses, sisters, brothers and relatives of Faik, Hekuran, Ziver and Aleks.
This day, this date and your presence here are more than enough a screaming indictment against the corrupt justice system in Albania; they represent the most piercing need of the Albanian people to bring justice out of the dark cell of the interests of corruption, of the corporation of judges who get rich through the injustices of 25 years; they are the most vital necessity of the Albanian society to have today a real and thorough justice reform.
Any politician who doesn’t see today in your families, in the parents and orphans of the 4 martyrs of January 21st the burden of his or her obligation to pave the way for justice, not only they don’t want justice reform, but they are its main obstacle.
Any prosecutor and judge who does not feel today the weight of shame for your unique suffering, in front of the silent wall of the castle of the corrupt justice system, not only they don’t want the justice reform but they are the reason why this reform should be done at any cost.
Each of the members of the Supreme Court who has buried the file of January 21st since 2013, and do not dare to bring it to justice, are today directly accused of being responsible for your 5-year long suffering in search of justice.
The shocking fact that the file of January 21st is the only file that hasn’t been examined by the Supreme Court of Albania since 2013, while this Court started examining long ago the files of 2014, is more than enough to understand how bad the conscience of the judges who have grabbed the neck of the Albanian justice is.
The state crime of January 21st, the execution in the boulevard of four unarmed and innocent men as the peaceful protests was about to end, is among those cases through which history has taught people that justice may be delayed, but it does never forget.
They can bury the file in the cemetery where the Supreme Court has been covering for ages with the soil of fear of its member the hot potatoes burning the hands of judges terrified of their own shadow, but the poignant need for justice for January 21st will never rot like the bodies of the four killed men. Never!
One day or another, justice will act both upon the murderers and upon those who murdered for the second time. It will act also upon those who ordered and killed four people from the windows and from the roof of this building, with bullets shot on the innocent people. It will act also upon those who interpreted in the courtrooms the macabre killings as a technical error, and killed for the second time both the dead and the living with the force of the judge’s gavel.
I know very well that many honest Albanians, who feel outraged by the impunity turned in a system, point a finger of accusation on me for your long and exhausting search of justice. Not a few among them, who can’t stand any longer this delay of justice by a corrupt caste associated body and soul with the dark interests of politics and crime, call me a traitor to January 21st.
I have nothing against them, and I totally sympathize with them, when they see how those responsible for the massacre hold us accountable every day, and without the slightest sense of shame, on behalf of the people, for the cancer that they spread to every sector of country life, and for the shocking social injuries that they caused to Albania.
It is cynical and humiliating, I know it very well, but today I am humble before you, and I will not go meekly along with you in front of the monuments in the boulevard, because I did not betray January 21st.
This government has not betrayed January 21st, because we have been working every day with patriotic dedication, to open a vast site of state-building reforms, to revive Albania plagued by the authors of January 21st, and to build the state that Albanians have been missing over the years.
Because we have been working every day to increase the safety of life and property, by fighting constantly against crime, and restoring the state police in the line of duty.
Because we have worked every day to boost the economy of the nation and of the households, by paying off a mountain of debts, by cutting taxes for all Albanians living with a salary under 1.3 million ALL, and by zeroing the tax for 83.500 self-employed running a small business.
Because we have worked every day to prevent the energy sector from sinking into the abyss of debts taken forcibly through massive theft, and have created conditions for investments that were impossible before, in order to provide quality power supply to Albanians.
Because we have worked every day to relieve the poor, by providing them the greatest social package that no government of this country has ever conceived and spent for.
Because we have worked every day to revive education, in order to free parents and young Albanians once and for all from tens of thousands of fake diplomas per year, and teachers and children from hundreds of embarrassing textbooks without any standard of any country of this continent, and started building a corruption-free merit system for the appointment of teachers.
Because we have been working every day to build a decent public administration that Albania has been missing for a quarter of century, by creating a system of competitions the first results of which have been welcomed by the European Commission.
Because we have been working every day to revive the health system rotten by corruption and impudence, by investing more and creating partnerships with private enterprises, which are being thrown against every day the cannon balls of mud of the old government, but which will yield step by step their useful fruits for Albanians who need healthcare.
Because we have been working every day to do these things and many more.
I am not proud that we have made it where we committed to, but because we have been working every day with passion as citizens with the patriotic will to go where we started heading together with the vast majority of Albanians two and a half years ago.
If we judge the situation where we are based on the horizon where we are headed to, we are the first to criticize ourselves every day and every hour. But if we judge the situation where we are based on where we started from, we are totally relieved precisely because we have not betrayed January 21st and none of those who protested on January 21st for a fairer Albania, and for a government that does not kill the people from the windows of the prime minister’s office, but serve them with dedication, commitment and obedience.
I know very well that everything we have done cannot be attributed its real value without the justice reform. The well-functioning of the justice system is the main prerequisite to build the country that we have started to build, and to ensure the progress of social and economic life of the country.
Today, all parties and sides, but also the representatives of the corrupt justice system as well, say they want justice reform. They recognize that the current state of the justice system is scandalous, but of course this is a theatre where the parties play their roles and where there are a lot of people who hope that justice reform will never be done, or wish that the historical and exemplary process of the justice reform drafting process will be reduced in a morsel to be swallowed up again by the wide-open mouths of politics, just like the chunks left over from the so-called reforms have been devoured over the past years.
On the other hand, there is certainly room for hope, because there are not a few politicians, judges or prosecutors within that corrupt system, who are determined and want the justice reform, and who support it.
I want to assure all of you that, as far as I am concerned, I will not allow the Socialist Party to betray the justice reform, which I consider the moral cornerstone of our government.
You know the rest, and ordinary Albanians know better than us, for they have all the necessary experience and wisdom to name all the actors in the theatre of the reform according to the roles they play. Just as like you, the ordinary people of this country, who do not live on the expenses of others and who do not make a living easily, know very well who is working, trying hard and making mistakes, while working and trying with the good intention to build a state and to give the country a new direction, and who is taking advantage precisely because there is no justice in this country, precisely because punishment doesn’t work in this country, and it is much easier for thieves to shout “Capture the thief!”
With my deepest gratitude for your understanding, for your patience and for your friendship which I value as very important for myself and for my family, I want to assure you that I am and will remain your spokesman, and that in every step, every decision, every effort made of course together with others, I am driven and will be driven by the necessity to not betray January 21st, as a fundamental issue on the path of justice reform, and as a people’s aspiration to have a cleaner and fairer Albania, a country where everyone feels at home, and not in the house of thieves of property, of freedoms and rights, as Albanians have often felt in the recent past”
Many thanks and a lot of respect!
May the memory of those four ordinary people who continue providing an extraordinary contribution to our very difficult but not impossible path to change this country and to reverse the humiliating justice system in this country be eternal!
