Address by Prime Minister Edi Rama to parliament’s plenary session on presentation of the 2022 state budget bill:

 

This is the first state budget we propose in our third term in office and the first chapter of our plan to materialize the Albania 2030 vision.

It is an intermediate proposed state budget amid the imposed phase due to the emergency triggered by two major natural disasters and the new phase to deliver on our ambition to achieve a new level of development in this decade.

This budget scheme is a testimony to a significant accomplishment in the last very tough two years to remain ambitious for the future, while healing the two grave wounds of today.

The earthquake wounds are healing, while the pandemic wounds are being treated, while, as the proposed state budget clearly shows, no sector or reform has been neglected and through this intermediate flexible budget, in spite of the energy crisis that has recently right on our doorstep, we boost funding to support this country’s citizens, the vulnerable social categories, the needy people, workers, children, pupils, young people, services and public investments. Under the new budget, we will inject significant funds to the national and household economy, ensuring an essential balance between the increases in public expenditure and keeping the public debt at a safe ratio in the country’s medium and long-term future.

We cut the personal income tax rate to zero for the monthly salaries up to 40,000 lek, providing relief to around 87, 604 workers, who add to the group of workers whose monthly salary is currently 30,000 lek and they pay no tax on personal income.

We will halve the personal income tax rate on monthly wages up to 40,000 and 50,000 lek, providing relief to 59, 993 more workers. We will also ease or almost halve the personal income tax rate on significantly qualified workers, whose monthly salaries range from 1.5 million to 2 million lek.

We increase the salaries for teachers and nurses by 6% based on a planned yearly pay rise, estimated at around 40% by the end of the third term in office.

We will increase the salaries through a special bonus by 150% for the State Police officers and officials, who serve far from their place of residence.

We will increase by 30% the salaries of the servicemen and servicewomen. No personal income tax rate will be applied to any of these categories.

We will triple the economic assistance for the women, victims of human trafficking, and orphaned children under 18. We will double the economic assistance for 15,000 families with three or more children under the age of 18. We will increase economic assistance by 10% for other families under the economic welfare scheme.

Under this budget, we legalize a monthly salary of 30,000 lek for oil workers throughout 2022, while seeking in the meantime a final solution to the oil refineries in Fier.

We finance by 2.6 billion lek or $26 million further pension indexation and the year-end bonus of 3.5 billion lek or $36 million for the retired people.

We will provide a funding of 2.3 billion lek or $23 million to provide the baby bonus.

We will provide 11.1 billion lek or $111 million to cover the medicine reimbursement scheme.

We will provide 2.7 billion lek or $27 million to ensure continued COVID-19 vaccination campaign.

For the first time ever, we will also launch the national arts and crafts programme, which will certainly include digital technology and sports, for children and pupils by earmarking a special state budget fund to support the programme.

On the other hand, every sector will benefit state budget support, starting with the justice system reform launched in 2016 under a funding plan of 4.28 billion lek or $42.8 million, and support for justice system will see a two-fold increase to 8.4 billion lek or $84 million under the next year’s state budget.

The judiciary reform has entered an important stage with the ongoing vetting of the corrupt judges and prosecutors and, on the other hand, with establishment of the new justice bodies. I would urge everyone who rightly expects more and faster results from the justice reform to be patient.

The digital revolution in delivering public services to the citizens, entrepreneurship, the country’s economic growth, employment and the fight against crime and corruption will be given a fresh impetus under the 2022 state budget.

The Italian media broadly reported earlier today and provided coverage of the President of the Republic of Italy filling an online application to obtain his birth certificate. In the meantime, today’s debate also focused on the fact that a range of public services are still not available, because of failure to ensure interaction among various databases. But this is for us a thing of the past now. The certificates have been provided online for years now, but all public services will be available via online starting on December 31 this year and citizens will no longer be forced to report in person to obtain documents.

In the meantime, we usher in a stage of completing the cycle of not only the online applications for a good part of documents bearing electronically impressed stamps that will be issued virtually, but also for all public services.

The co-governance platform has been already adopted by parliament and the law has entered into force to take to a whole new level entire traditional communication network between the state institutions and the citizens, because there is much confusion and a range of theories, but the very essence is that every state, from the most developed ones to the developing countries, traditionally for decades and centuries-long have their public relation offices, which, as it has also been the case here until few years ago, mostly operate through written official documents. The platform has taken this relation to the level of the online interface, ensuring in the meantime continued observation and oversight of the entire interaction process, ensuring oversight of the public administration regarding legitimacy in terms of the relations with the citizens, who forward requests, complaints or ideas, and ensuring a base on which the anticorruption unit at the Ministry of Justice has now entered a new phase.

What we will guarantee in the future,  and it is our ambition to deliver on it during this term in office, not only to ultimately shut down the service windows throughout the Republic of Albania, which  used to deliver public services with people staying and waiting on long queues and in direct contacts with the public administration employees, which often turn out to be bribery-based relations or with the main feature being the constant delay in delivering services, but also to eventually make sure that the citizen simply files a request and all the supporting documentation required to obtain a public service, a certificate, a permit, an authorization, be provided within for within the digitized state system and no citizens are no longer forced to knock on 7 or 17 doors for their documents to be ready so that they can obtain any authorization or a certificate.

The Digital Cadastre is now an advanced process. We are well aware of the wound plaguing the state-citizen relation over the decades when it comes to obtaining the property ownership certificates or the legalization documents from the State Cadastre offices. With the final digitalization of the service, the State Cadastre will be an institution accessible via a smart phone, a personal computer and without no service windows and will in the very same way issue all the required documents on the property ownership, bearing e-stamps and signatures.

The territory’s smart protection, public order and safety will usher in a whole new phase under the 2022 state budget, either by securing satellites or the smart drones, which would allow us to gather real-time database and totally reliable information on any crimes committed against the environment throughout the territory, namely the illicit waste disposal sites, unauthorized buildings, as well as other aspects concerning agriculture, the cultivated land area, the energy, hydro resources, rivers, forest fires, without forgetting the fight against crime in the sense of a completely different potential to identify and track down criminals and their illegal activities.

The digitized national traffic control centre is a project already underway.

A part of it is ready and we should now move on to the other part, namely installation of smart outdoor security camera systems, initially along the national roads to ensure real-time control of the road traffic and potential violation of the road traffic rules or other important data that institutions need to identify any vehicle hitting the roads all over the country, and ultimately removing traffic police or patrols from the roads.

Cyber defence will also be included on the list of our top priorities now and state budget funds will be allocated to specifically support this area by building a cyber defence centre in Albania to protect all our technological communication systems. Digital data storage center, which means all the state data, which need today to have a back-up storage, so that whatever happens to one system or another, no data is lost and no time is lost in reusing the data.

The state budget funding for children’s technological education, as well as the direct funding of the start-up is estimated at 6.5 billion lek or $65 million under the 2022 budget, significantly up from the funds earmarked for technology in 2021. Meanwhile, the figure could jump to over $ 100 million through the third-party funds in 2022.

In this regard, I would like to point out the Ministry of Defence role in being transformed into a new gravity centre for the digital Albania, becoming a space of data guarantee, a cyber defense trench, but also another space of scientific research and technological innovation.

Further, health, education and environment, without going over details, which will surely be explained by the cabinet members, the state budget for the Health and Social Protection for 2022 is estimated at 91.3 billion lek or $913 million, which accounts for 4.89 of the GDP, while the state budget will provide 63.8 billion lek or 3.6% of GDP for the health system, from 2.6 % in 2013.

This is a brief introduction for those who will certainly take the floor and comment on this percentage.

As for the education sector, the state budget will finance a series of new steps. Introducing English education in the Albanian primary education system, beginning in the first grade, has been applied since the start of this school year. We also plan to introduce digital technology education in the primary education system, while the curricula will largely focus on science, technology and mathematics, which would help in the process of the digital education of pupils in the country’s primary education system.

The next year’s state budget plans to earmark 1.9 billion lek or $ 19 million to support school labs and the new IT teaching system, due to be applied starting next school year.

In the meantime, as I already said, a special funding will be allocated to support the national program on introduction of the arts, crafts and sports as subjects to the school curriculum, which will also include technology and sports training and education at school. These programmes are being elaborated and will be introduced to the curricula of the schools throughout the country starting next year. Meanwhile, several steps will be taken towards IT teaching in the early months of next year.

As far as universities are concerned, we are very determined to push towards internationalization of the country’s universities. It is the only way. We have created a positive synergy with all universities, and we have set up a joint cooperation committee between the government and the university rectors. We are witnessing encouraging developments and meanwhile, starting with the next year’s state budget, since it is the first time we launch work on this direction and we also want to learn from the process, a total of $7 million has been allocated to promote internationalization of the universities that will move faster to establish relationships with European or other international universities around the world, leading to joint programs and joint degree programs.

In this aspect, together with the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, we are working in tandem to press ahead with an intense lobbying process with the European Commission, as well as with partner countries, the European Council member states,  so that an innovative step is made with the Western Balkan countries and specifically Albania, clearing the path towards faster integration of certain systems, including the university education system, without waiting for them to become EU members. It is a process that would certainly take some time, but I am really confident that we will succeed in opening up some fresh paths as part of this process regardless of progress of the integration process itself that is dictated by external factors that have nothing to do with us or other Western Balkan countries.

The other aspect immediately after education and the health system is the environment, namely the cleanliness of the country, the cleanliness of our cities, the cleanliness of the beaches, the cleanliness of the cultural heritage sites and the cleanliness as a whole. In this respect too, we will earmark a specific state budget funding, in view of a fundamental change of the whole approach to the territory in terms of cleanliness. But what I want to reiterate today, as I have indicated upon presentation of the government program, is that the local government must receive the message that cleanliness and guaranteeing the quality of cleaning throughout the perimeter of municipalities, is for us an inalienable criterion, determining the extent of further support of local government.

We have also earmarked special funding to encourage and support the best performing municipalities. But in the meantime, we will impose sanctions, penalties and even drastic administrative measures against all local government authorities and municipalities that fail to perform and no municipal budget bill will be approved by the city council members if no funding is projected to support cleaning of the territory based on a new costing method, which has been already prepared and will be made available by the Ministry of Tourism and Environment to each municipality.

I think that the 2022 state budget is really meaningful in terms of further support for the country’s agriculture sector, despite some sporadic expression of discontent or refusal to figure out that this is about an approach and a philosophy on development of agriculture. It is not about anything else except for the fact for one thing I would like to tell you and those who complain about the Value Added Tax. I would like to tell everyone that the entire amount removed from the state budget because of the reduction of the VAT rate, has been already doubled and has been made available to agriculture again. So, the government hasn’t cut funding for agriculture. Quite the opposite is true. The state budget is affected by the measures designed to provide incentives to farmers by cutting VAT rate and the amount affecting the state budget will see a two-fold increase under the next year’s budget bill, adding up to the direct support funds for the agriculture, in order to keep creating models and, indeed, facts and figures speak for themselves when it comes to agriculture, and facts and figures are not opinions.

Albania’s agriculture exports are 323% higher in the last nine months of 2022 compared to the same period of 2013. The next year’s state budget projects an amount of 12.7 billion lek or $127 million for agriculture in 2022.

A total of 7.1 billion lek is earmarked as part of the rural development program, which also includes direct support for farmers, specifically an amount of 3.2 billion lek in direct support for around 40 to 50,000 registered farmers, because we can’t keep funding informality, we can’t keep providing funding to the sector if a good part of those involved and earning their living from this sector are not formalized, and by refusing formalization, although they face no administrative effects, they practically lose any access to the state budget funds, lose any access to the support schemes, including the EU-funded schemes.

A total amount of 2.2 billion lek is provided under the EU-funded scheme to support around 200 investment projects on agro-processing or on physical assets currently inaccessible by the unregistered farmers. It has also been confirmed that the support for the excise-free oil for farmers has doubled, but the number of farmers entitled to benefit from excise-free oil depends on the number of the registered farmers, which has worked best during this initial stage and we plan to extend further step by step.

The state budget also projects an additional funding of 4 million to support agricultural start-ups, while a considerable funding of $23 million or 2.3 billion lek is also earmarked for food safety as a huge gap has yet to be filled in this aspect.

We will keep supporting investment projects to improve and upgrade the irrigation infrastructure across the country and, to conclude, I would like to cite significant facts. First, the area of cultivated agricultural land in Albania has doubled since 2013. Second, although we inherited a system with a small number of collection points and storage facilities for agricultural products in 2013, more than 250 collection points are now operational all over the country, with  cooling, storage, refrigeration capacities that we will continue to finance and further increase, because of the high demand in certain territories in particular.

All these combined are of course directly related to what is also an immovable pillar of our economic development, namely the tourism sector. We have every reason to believe that tourism sector will keep growing, but at the same time we face the challenge to make sure that tourism growth is not just a figure in terms of the visitor numbers, but also the sector sees a much higher increase in revenue regardless the visitor numbers, which means that the today’s a tourism relies on the middle and low income tourist, while the high income tourist who is also the largest consumer and who is also the largest creator of the value chain for the country’s economy is still very little present. S series of major projects will help in this respect.

In a few days, on November 28, we will start construction of Vlora international airport. Therefore I invite all Socialist and opposition lawmakers representing Vlora district to join us in the ceremony marking the start of construction work, because it is a very important event and it marks the end of a long train of difficulties for reasons not depending on us.

Likewise, work on construction of the tourist port in Vlora is set to kick off in the next few weeks, an investment project designed to take local and national tourism to a whole new level, as I already stated a bit earlier, in a bid to attract not only low and middle-income visitors, but also high-income and elite tourists to create a new chain of value for the local economy of the coastal city of Vlora , but also a significant impact on the national economy. In the meantime, I very much hope we will finalize within this year the contract on construction of the tourist port in Durres, so that construction work on the project’s initial stage can start very soon.

Likewise, work is already underway on construction of the new tourist port in the coastal town of Saranda, and the international tender procedures for construction of the tourist airport in Saranda have been launched and all of these projects on the maritime and air gateways are also closely related to the investment projects on infrastructure. The ongoing infrastructure investments are designed precisely to revive and revitalize all the potential tourist destinations either on the coastal areas or in the mountainous areas. We will also definitely launch another major infrastructure project on construction of the highway between Murriqan, Milot, Kashar, Rrogozhine and Fier. The project will definitely kick off in the very near future.

Another series of important investment projects on the energy sector will start soon and I avail myself of this opportunity to highlight – as it has to do with the 2022 state budget – we will strongly stick to our commitment to defend the residential and small business customers from the electricity price increase. Many could pretend as if they don’t see – because it is in their interest to do so –  what is actually happening with the electricity price in the countries in the region, probably many don’t wish to see what is happening with the household consumers in the neighbouring countries, namely Greece, Italy and other countries, with the main ongoing debate focusing on the surging heating cost for household consumers. These countries face a high increase in electricity price for residential and small business consumers.

We will continue to maintain the current electricity price by providing state budget funds to compensate costs covered by the state coffers, hoping that the crisis wave will soften its blow in the second half of next year.

Further on, I would also like to highlight the sovereign guarantee funds that the government has made available to various sectors, starting with the sovereign guarantee earmarked for the manufacture and entrepreneurship, tourism industry, while preparations are already underway for another guarantee fund to support housing sector, which will be made available hopefully in the first half of next year.

These are more or less what I had to briefly say, without going over details and figures that you will certainly come across in the upcoming proceedings, but the today’s good news is that according to official data all the jobs lost during the pandemic were totally recovered since January 2021, and the country’s economic growth, which will keep increasing thanks to the injections and the public investment in major public infrastructure projects I already mentioned. We are absolutely optimistic that the unemployment rate will drop t 10.3% from the current rate of 11.4% , while utmost efforts will be made to enlarge the space for new high-paying jobs and this is the reason why we would commit more funds to support technology and start-ups, coding, IT education in schools, as well as a network of IT centres for young people, which, as we have already announced during the election campaign earlier this year, will expand to main municipalities, starting with Tirana, due to complete soon, Vlora, Shkodër, Durrës and so on and so forth. Thank you very much!

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Rejoinder:

It wouldn’t be worth replying if this was to be a normal plenary session, because it is the same old phonograph recording being constantly replayed, but it is worth doing so today and to touch upon two or three issues that concern citizens. First of all, this is the Eurostat chart and it has nothing to do with the government, it has nothing to do with the so-called electoral massacre, and it has nothing to do with the public-private partnership contracts or PPPs.

According to this chart, the poverty rate in Albania in 2019 is not 50% or 60% as you claim. This was actually Albania’s poverty rate when the country was governed by today’s opposition. The poverty rate back then was 40%, ranking together with countries like Turkey, with its poverty rate estimated at 22.4%.

The poverty rate in Turkey is 22.4%, in Latvia 22.9%, Albania 23%, Serbia – since you said that citizens in Serbia have escaped poverty – 23.2%, Romania 23.8% and Montenegro 24.5%. These are data provided by Eurostat.

You have a physiological and psychological problem with the figures, but this is the Eurostat chart.

Of course you can take the floor here and claim that the poverty rate is 50%, but I have said that you can claim it is higher, 60%, 70%, or even 100%. This way you personally will be part of the people in poverty, because it is not a problem to pretend as if you are poor. However, this is the truth. As it is true that no comparison can be drawn between today’s data and the data on the poverty rate when the country was governed by your party.

Second, I would like to highlight the Democratic Party’s claims over the supposed fund of 113 million euros for the PPPs that the opposition vows to cancel and save retired people, social categories and farmers by doing so.

What would DP cancel?

Would it cancel the endpoint waste solutions?

I am sure they would do so, because they never acted to tackle pollution and waste management when in office, and therefore we face a continued problem now, which was actually a status quo previously. The waste was disposed of on the streets, in rivers and everywhere else. Given that you are fixated on the amount of 113 million, do you know the percentage of payment the government has to settle for the waste management plants? Do you have any idea about the amount of money the state budget has to pay?

The total amount is estimated at $9 million only, or 900 million lek, namely around 600 million lek for the waste management plant in Fier, and over 200 million for Tirana. While the waste management plant in Elbasan is no longer included, because the plant is now nationalized and it is a property of the Albanian state, while for several years now the citizens in the central city no longer see the smog hovering over their heads because of the garbage being burnt at the city’s park area.

I am convinced that when it comes to waste and garbage, you certainly think it would be better that waste management ceases. Your relation with garbage, rubbish and ugliness is physiologically harmonious.

For the citizens to know, the whole amount to be paid by the state budget is around nine million only.

What else would you cancel and save Albania by doing so?

Would you cancel the contract on sterilization of medical equipment? I know you can cancel the contract, as you don’t mind it at all, since you left hospitals to use the medical equipment of the Albania-China love-era, causing more than 50,000 postoperative infections a year, precisely because of such outdated medical equipment. Mothers used to be hospitalized for more than a week because of the infections after giving birth, exactly because of the lack of sterilization of medical equipment.

It doesn’t seem to me that any of us stopped your phonograph recording playing. Why are you seeking to interrupt me? Show some respect for humans, just like you do for your old phonograph. Let me finish.

Would you cancel the dialysis contract? Patients needing to receive dialysis’ service were forced to receive the service in a three-shift based system previously and they had to travel all the way to Tirana from other cities across the country to receive the life-saving service.

I know you can cancel the contract, because you don’t mind doing so. You can let waste flood the streets and squares, as you actually did when in office. You can also stop the sterilization, because you want rusty medical equipment. You can also do so with the dialysis contract.

What else do you plan to cancel? The medical check-up program? Of course you can do so.

First of all, it is a matter of civilization. This is where we differ, not as political parties. We are two completely different civilizations when it comes to prevention. You have no idea what prevention is? All you know is “move forward, stop other people.” Therefore, the check-up programme will be there, like it or not and hundreds of thousands of people will benefit from it as they will undergo health care tests and checks for free, because they used to pay 90,000 lek for primary health tests when you used to govern the country. All this money doesn’t end up in the oligarchs’ pockets, but is earmarked to provide citizens to citizens. This is because you should pay in exchange for a service and it is the state that pays for the services provided to its citizens.

What else do you plan to cancel? Would you cancel the medical labs PPP contract?

You can do so, because you don’t actually mind doing it.

What else would you cancel? Would you cancel the contract on maintenance of the road Luli built, namely the so-called the Nation’s Road, whose construction has yet to complete? Would you cancel it?

I am talking about the state budget. We can discuss other issues and everything else next time. We are talking about the state budget today. This is not about the toll fee on the highway users, but this is about the state budget funds required for the road’s maintenance.

What else do you plan to cancel? Would you cancel the contract on construction of Arber Road? You don’t mind doing that, indeed, since you promised to construct the highway anytime you used to travel over there and all it left is the drum sound.

There is indeed a contract I would actually like to cancel. Out of all these contracts, there is one of them I would like to cancel as it costs more than the contract on the waste management plants, the contracts on the medical check-up, on the sterilization of the medical instruments, and the dialysis combined. Do you know which contract is that? It is the one we inherited from your previous government, namely the scanning service. This is the difference between two civilizations, there is a huge difference between our two governments, because the citizens are the ones benefiting from all the services I already mentioned.

The air pollution would be reduced, the water wouldn’t be polluted, the streets and neighbourhoods across the country would be clean if the wastes were to be collected and processed. If sterilization of the medical equipment is conducted in line with the European standards, patients who need to undergo surgery are the ones to benefit. The haemodialysis patients are the ones to benefit. If the medical labs offer a range of options to conduct tests, the ones to benefit are the citizens.

Who are the ones to benefit from the scanning contract? Because, scanning is a service that should be provided by the state. The state is the one that should fight and make efforts to put everything under control. Why should the citizens and businesses pay for every lorry entering and leaving the territory of the Republic of Albania, despite whether they undergo scanning or not? Why? Do you know the cost of this contract? It is an amount of $20 million that is paid by the state budget a year for the concessionary contract your previous government awarded and we cannot suspend, as the contract has been approved by parliament and no Court of Arbitration would rule in favour of you. So, anytime you issue statements and allegations over the PPPs you should recall and people should recall that the only concessionary contract, the only PPP contract awarded by authorities in this Republic and from which citizens benefit nothing at all, from which businesses benefit nothing, but instead they pay for a certain business, is the scanning contract. And I am not going to focus on the famous contract on the vehicles annual technical inspection, which we already cancelled and the situation has changed once the state took over this service.

And that contract was actually included in the state budget, with the government paying a business and that’s why you think everyone else is like you anytime you take the floor here. These are all services delivered to the citizens.

Let’s turn focus to another point I already mentioned earlier.  Do you know how much the state budget pays in compensation for the electricity price to the families in need? You have no idea about that. You have no idea about facts and figures. The government provides compensation for 206,000 families and the state budget allocates $45 million for the electricity price to be unchanged for this social category. This is part of social protection.

Last but not least, since you care about the farmers’ woes and the ones who have taken the streets today. What has happened here? Since you mentioned Serbia, I would invite you to take the floor and tell us the VAT rate Serbia applies to the agricultural inputs. Given that you know what is going on in Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and North Macedonia, I would invite you to take the floor and tell us the VAT rate applied by these countries, or better ask the lawmaker on your side as she is the one who provides you such figures. I challenge you to tell us the VAT rate applied in the countries in the region. Don’t interrupt me, because there is no problem with ethics at all. Kites are flying objects we used to play with during our childhood. So, in a way this is actually a compliment. You can take it personally and consider it an insult, but this is not the case.

The VAT rate applied on the agricultural inputs under this fiscal package stands at 10%. What has actually happened? Why have we changed the rate, including the 6% VAT rate for the agriculture collection centres? What was the goal? The decision to remove VAT on agricultural inputs was designed to lower their price. But what happened? We all found that not only the price didn’t fall, but it actually rose. Why? This is because the demand for the agricultural inputs has increased and such an increase can be simply and best illustrated by the growth in agriculture exports. Who took advantage of it? The total difference from the VAT rate change on a sector, whose total value in the Albanian economy is estimated at 3.5 billion lek, the total of the two is actually estimated at around $17 million shared by the agricultural input wholesalers, who didn’t actually cut the price, and the enterprises collecting agricultural products. What are we doing now? We transfer this amount of money to the state budget and you can check it.

All these funds will no longer end up in the pocket of the 138 collectors of the agricultural products, since this is the total number of those who have actually benefited under this decision designed to make sure that the funding is distributed to farmers, but just a part of these funds have been transferred to farmers. These funds will also not end up in the pockets of the input wholesalers, but instead they will be included in the national agriculture support scheme, which now totals 7.1 billion lek. So, whoever really wishes to do this job, whoever really wants to engage in farming and agriculture-based businesses will be granted support through the national support scheme, which is directly provided to farmers and agro-processing businesses, and it is not a scheme channelling the whole supposed contribution to a handful of people.

This is the essence of it all and to conclude I would repeat; figures are not opinions. These are the figures and they are available to you all and anytime you comment on the proposed state budget -and it is normal for you to ask for a lot more because it is your duty to do so – but you should primarily provide arguments on what you demand. And stop calling for suspension of contracts. I told you, they are all contracts designed to serve citizens. But what are you going to cancel? Would you cancel the contracts on construction of Arbri Road? Would you cancel the contract on maintenance of the Nation’s Road, sterilization of medical equipment? Would you cancel the contract on the dialysis, the medical labs, and the contracts on waste management? But the problem is that you can cancel none of them. You can simply vote against everything, but you can neither cancel, nor deter anything. You couldn’t stop us in the past, and you stand no chance of doing so now or in the future. All you can now do is how and who to block within your party ranks, because we have a lot to do and we will keep moving forward. We will build Albania for our children and for your children.