Speech of the Prime Minister Edi Rama:

If I decided to write one day a chronological book about the history of this process and faithfully list what I’ve seen and heard, both in English and Albanian, I am sure that not a single reader would believe the things they would read. But I don’t think I am ever going to write the book of this history that I lived, in every step, as an eyewitness, because some people’s representatives here in this room would be bothered, and the people out there along with the entire community of our international friends would be upset.

Without those friends, without these friends who are following us from the balconies of this Parliament, this day of the consensual vote on the 25-year delayed reform would have never come before the seed of a 7-head rotten politics that does nothing but insults and divides was extinguished. A politics that transformed justice in the arena of its own misdeeds, and still keeps thinking on how to unjustly exploit our beautiful Albania.

As for our country’s dear friends, that politics has but one purpose: sneakily manipulate them. As for our people tortured for centuries, it has but one purpose: ruthlessly squeeze them in the ballot box, to provide the food for its insatiable gut. That’s why it was so terribly hard, and for many impossible to send up from this parliament the white smoke of a reform that will send up the black smoke from the palace of injustice.

Therefore, I thank and apologize to every international friend of Albania’s, ranging from the ambassadors present in this room, especially: the Ambassador of the United States and the Ambassador of the European Union, who deserve an applause, not only to thank them, but also to apologize to them. And then, President Obama, Chancellor Merkel, President Hollande, Prime Minister Renzi, without forgetting Secretary of State John Kerry, the head of the European diplomacy, Frederica Mogherini, Commissioner Hahn and last but not least, our dearest friend, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.

A wholehearted thank you, because these invaluable friends shaped an extraordinary commitment, as never before in Albania in these 25 years, to pave the way for the Albanian people to start and get back their right that has been wickedly taken from them for 25 years: Justice!

I am convinced that the Albanians who are following tonight the end of this odyssey and could not believe until a few hours that the Judicial reform would be deep, real, internationally certified and finally approved by consensus, will be always grateful to our great friends, the United States and the European Union, and will always remember the faces and names of the dearest friends I mentioned earlier.

If we are all in this consensus, unthinkable for many until a few hours ago, whether driven by the passion for justice or, as people say, willy-nilly, this will have no importance tomorrow. Today’s vote will make the curtain of a long-awaited revolution in Justice go up, and on the path of this revolution Albania, the average people of this country, or those who have entered the arena of politics to serve and not to rob, will be side by side with the United States and the European Union.

Our strategic allies will have from now on a constitutional role, they will be an active part of the process at every step, and people should know and should be prepared that this process will not be any easier from the step that we took today.

This is the healthiest, fairest, and most just achievement of this reform. I assure all Albanians that corrupt judges and prosecutors will be swept away from the justice system by the iron broom of the Vetting, thanks to which the implementation troops of the reform will be pre-selected and supported by the International Monitoring Operation. In a fierce battle with the moneyed killers of the corrupt Albanian justice, and with the adverse politics which will never give up any day or night, in its attempt to stop the new story that has just begun. But, as the Prime Minister of Albania, I would like to deeply apologize to our steadfast allies down this path, which recently turned into a dangerous uphill with sudden and unjustifiable curves that exhausted and stressed not a little the people eager for justice, and surprised and shocked not a little our friends.

I apologize because, neither the United States nor the European Union, and certainly not this people bound with heart and mind to America and Europe, deserved to see at the peak of this historical process the explosion of a sovereign vulgarity against the American threat.

The tragicomic figures of a scared, deceitful and delirious politics that, in the last mile of the voting of the reform, lost all sense of reality and made all of us look ridiculous in the eyes of the world, are the most meaningful expression of the value of this historic reform.

Gratitude to the United States and to the European Union, many thanks to the European Mission of Justice, EURALIUS and the United States Mission of Justice, OPDAT, and to all experts engaged in this process so complicated.

Thanks to the Chairman of the Law Reform Commission, Fatmir Xhafa, whose role was and remains key to this newly initiated process.

Thanks, also, to Pandeli Majko, Vasilika Hysi, Vexhi Muçmataj, Ulsi Manjas and Petrit Vasili who, in the quality of the committee members, brought forward the reform on behalf of the ruling majority, amid threats for the burned land and the mockery for “the republic of experts”.

Today, the winner is Albania!

I won’t dwell any further because my speeches ended yesterday, when a consensus was reached and the victory was declared also by our friends in the opposition.

Wishing the Democratic Party as many victories like that of yesterday, I invite you to vote the Reform.

Good night!