The today’s cabinet meeting will review a series of important decisions, about which Prime Minister Edi Rama commented in a statement to the reporters following a meeting of the Socialist Party’s Chairmanship.

The government head announced that the today’s meeting will also discuss a New Year’s Eve pardon, with the female inmates expected to benefit most from the clemency. “At the cabinet meeting that is about to begin, we will make a decision and I believe that women will be the main beneficiaries of the pardon. I would have wished that the list of benefiting female inmates was a much longer one, but I am very much in minority at this aspect. I would have wanted a general pardon be granted to all women inmates. A huge debate is going on over the women who have killed husbands and, to put it clearly, this is not a political, but a juridical debate, a much more complicated one rather than the desire, or my good will. We have gone through several debates indeed and it is not that women hate women, but killing someone is not a crime that can be easily pardoned and I think they are right in legal terms. I had simply not gone deeper in this aspect but I instinctively thought that such a thing could be complete. However, the amnesty will be significant for women. This is for sure. A great deal of women who are serving their prison sentence will benefit from clemency,” he said.

Another issue set to be discussed at the cabinet meeting is that of an extra year-end pension bonus, with the Premier saying: “You know quite well that current situation is not normal and we are very prudent, because we want none of our priorities be affected and we want none of the parts of the overall governance be affected. We should be cautious because the damages are there and we don’t still know the full extent of quake damages and the financial aid we will receive to cope with the situation. We have taken over and we have readied the possible scenario of coping with the situation, even if we are left alone, but that means we have to reconsider other major projects and aspects of development. So we’re a little bit at this stage not wanting to undermine priorities, and as we’ve seen, priorities haven’t been undermined so far, but at the same time we don’t want to spend before February, when we will finally find out the size of financial contribution by our friends and partners so that we have a better idea about what to plan and what we shall do afterwards.”