Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama in the parliamentary session:
This is an unprecedented farce, in the wake of the general farce called the Democratic Party. The National Bureau of Investigation has been in the program of the Socialist Party since even before the Socialist Party won the elections. The National Bureau of Investigation is part of the program of the Albanian government, and it is one of the objectives in our program for reforming the security and justice system in Albania.
We are determined to continue on our path, and you can neither stop us, hinder us nor delay us. The maximum you can do is come here in this roomand waste time, and make us waste time together with you on Thursdays. This is the maximum, and as for the rest you can talk as mush as you want, you can say whatever you want, you can slander, insult and calumniate as much as you want! We are not conducting a fight to persuade you. Our fight is to reform Albania thoroughly, to modernize and to finally build the state we don’t have, and we are held accountable only to citizens.
It is not up to you to determine who is corrupt, who steals, who commits thievery, first of all because you’ve shown your shameless face. You have no sort of decorum in relation tothe truth and in relation to the Albanian public. You haven’t taken any measure in two and a half years to restore the party that was shattered in the elections of 2013, and re-shattered in the elections of 2015. At this pace, we will see one year and a half from now how true what I am saying is. You will be shattered as you were neither in 2013 nor in 2015.
As for the State Police and its relationship with citizens, as for the battle of the State Police with crime and criminals, I pray only for one thing, not you. I pray that you go on doing what you do every day, distribute wall-posters against the police and against the Minister of Interior. Go on! This is the best advertising to the fact that you are shameless. You are a group without a vision, without any kind of program, without any sense of direction, without any sense of the future. You just recite the platitudes crossing your mind, because you have no idea what is going on here, who does what and how they do it. Your bosses tell you fairy tales, from the leader to the administrator of the bankrupt company, and you come here and recite their stories.
The National Bureau of Investigation is in our program as a party, it is in our program as a governing coalition, and is part of a process that –whether you want it or not–will go forward, and you who are here will come and vote not the National Bureau of Investigation, you will come and vote the justice reform, and we will bear witness to it. You will come here and will swallow whatever you have been saying, and pretend you never said any of the nonsense you have lined up in the wall-posters that you have distributed across Albania and in the media, as much as around the world. You will forget all of them and will come here and vote the justice reform.
I have not spoken a single day and I do not intend to speak. I remain faithful to the principle by which we have established our relationship with the public in relation to this reform. I will remain faithful to the end, and when the day is right to speak, I will say my word. But I am convinced that my word will be unnecessary in view of the adoption, because who does not endorse judicial reform will be totally ruinedonce they are before the people’s trial at the polls.
As for the Bureau, we have finished our work but we do not live on the moon, and we know that there is a process of judicial reform that cannot be overlooked. We cannot do something that the reform might consider hasty within a few weeks. Thus, the document you have agreed upon has been made available to the Reform Committee, so let the Reform Committee discuss it and give their opinion. The moment the Reform Committee says that this document is not relevant, or it does not affect the reform, or that is not redundant, so it can be voted before voting the first package of the reform, hence, the constitutional changes, you can be assured that it will be voted without the slightest hesitation.
This is the simple truth of this story. Your propaganda is a platitude, a farce going on every single day, and you can go ahead and continue intensively. Just remember this: every daily insult to the State Police, every daily insult to the Minister of Interior is, at this point, a real contribution to properly advertise your shameless face as a political party.
