Speech of Prime Minister Rama at the signing of the cooperation agreement on technical assistance to be provided to the new 61 municipalities throughout the process of their consolidation:

In the first place, I welcome all mayors elected on 21 June.

Let me say since the beginning that when we warned that the new administrative division would be conceived not as a mechanical sum of geographic units, but as a state-building process to transform the administrative units we inherited into units of economic growth, we were not just saying it. Neither was that warning a river of words in the last electoral campaign, but a vision which we are determined to implement together with you, without any party differences, rather with a sense of our common mission to give the Albanians wherever they live a local government worthy of a European country.

You heard how painfully actual Teki Selenica’s words are. I even think that while the municipality of Gjirokaster was given the papers in 1928 by the Italians, or the municipality of Shkoder was given them by the Austro-Hungarians, or the municipality of Korça was given them by the French, we have them today from our sources on which Eqerem Çabej would have suggested us, had he been alive, a particular structure for the translation form Albanian to Albanian.

However we are here today with the deepest gratitude to UNDP for investing in a strategic project of the Albanian government and facilitated our work which is necessary, but really difficult for our finances.

In addition, I am thankful for making available to us one of the largest international auditing companies who will provide to mayors across Albania not just an exhaustive documentation regarding the current financial situation and assets of the new units of administration, but also a new knowledge about how to keep financial records in the future, and how to work with them, not just to keep inventory but to build development policies.

I am convinced that this process, very similar to that of the late Teki, will give us a global view and will help us understand better what colossal losses we have had in finances and assets in all these years, in addition to showing us how to prepare to minimize losses and maximize income from municipal assets.

We are seriously committed to a decentralization reform and to a real enhancement of the local government, because we are convinced that what has been called decentralization in all these years was nothing but a fragmentation and comminuting of the potentials not only of the territory, but also of the entire economic and financial structure of the country as a whole.

On the other hand, I am convinced that this audit will be a very important instrument to fight the large corruption inherited at the local government level, in two respects. In terms of the need for punishment, and in terms of the need for modernization because corruption is an alternative government. Corruption is much faster than the government in providing unlawfully what people require lawfully. And to destroy this alternative, we must accelerate the pace of legitimate governance and make it highly efficient and result-oriented. So, we must modernize.

Modernization of local government is the mission of this government, and we want to accomplish it together with all of you by taking advantage of the experience of those who confirmed their mandates on June 21, as well as of the ideas and the energy of those who on June 21 were chosen for the time first.

Therefore, the signing of this agreement of strategic importance for the progress of your work and our work together is followed by a second part where we will talk about how we want to approach quickly together with you the decentralization process, as a new process for making decentralization of power, responsibilities, and of all mechanisms that provide consistency to the power, and make it possible for responsibilities to be kept, in order to close the era of fragmentation and thorough comminuting of a territory, where we still have to build the state that Albanians deserve, and the state that those who were elected should have available in order to do the outmost of their aspirations for their communities.

Once again, thank you to UNDP. You know that I am thrifty when it comes to showing gratitude to internationals. But this is the case to be truly thankful, because this is a strategic project that has found support of the donor. It is not in the wake of those projects that often apply to salve the conscience of donors who leave this country with nothing. At the same time, I welcome you and your company. I am convinced that you will help us with your culture, experience and knowledge, so that poor Teki will finally rest in peace in his grave.

Thank you!