The Criminal Procedure Code and Rama in the footsteps of Enver Hoxha: "Why will our laws stop us?"

Gent Gaba

Edi Rama has undergone a metamorphosis in his public rhetoric on justice. Ever since Veliaj fell into the prosecutors’ net—the latest fish from the far-from-insignificant socialist shoal—the Prime Minister’s language has abandoned its sweet declarations of love for the “new justice system.” For years, before Albanians and international partners alike, Rama never tired of playing Penelope: unravelling by night what was being woven by day to reform the justice system with American and European taxpayers’ money.

Today, as the last of the Mohicans with whom he came to power, surrounded by scandals and wrongdoing involving public assets, he has moved from the aggressive refrain of “prison, prison, prison” to the role of guarantor of procedural rights.

Not because he has suddenly discovered legal humanism, but because the justice system can no longer avoid seeing the wolf where the tracks of Balluku, Karçanaj, Agasi, Yeffet and others have led it.

It is precisely now that Rama has discovered that the state can be repressive, that pretrial detention can be excessive, and that the individual must be protected from the power of the prosecution.

The 106-article draft amending the Code of Criminal Procedure is being presented as a “Procedural Safeguards Package.” It was prepared without consultation with domestic stakeholders, yet lazily coated with the veneer of prestigious foreign expertise. It erects obstacles to the examination of mobile phones, restricts wiretapping, allows investigative deadlines to be challenged retroactively, and requires officials to be notified five days before the imposition of certain security measures or suspension from office.

It is a trick resembling that of Odysseus in the Cyclops’ cave: Rama seeks to pass beneath the sheep—read, the citizens—smuggling himself and his brood with him, all of them fallen into grave sin before justice.

In short, it is the castration of SPAK. It makes Rama appear not only hypocritical but also publicly exposes the fear that has seized him over the deeds and disasters now reeking both inside and outside the country. For Rama cannot simultaneously be the architect of imprisonment as a policy for citizens and political opponents, and the apostle of procedural liberties for his own officials. He cannot spend years constructing a punitive state and then demand its dismantling only when its gate may open for him as well.

Ironically, this elastic relationship with the law recalls an old mentality long cherished by the leaders of the party that changed its name from the Party of Labour of Albania to the Socialist Party in 1991. In his speech of 6 February 1967, which paved the way for the violent campaign against religion, Enver Hoxha asked rhetorically: “Why, are our laws going to stop us…?”

That is how Edi Rama sounds today. Just as the faith of the “new justice system” begins to waver in the man who portrayed himself as its prophet, the philosophy of absolute power comes into view: the law is respected only for as long as it serves the leader; once it begins to restrain him, it is rewritten.

Once, the law was not supposed to obstruct the revolution. Today, procedure must not be allowed to come too close to power. In both cases, the ruler refuses to accept the law as a limit upon himself. He treats it instead as a weapon whose edge can be sharpened against others and blunted whenever the blade turns towards him.

Rama loved justice when it was a sword in the hands of power. Now that it hangs over his head like the sword of Damocles, he wants to force it back into its scabbard.

And the question concealed behind the new package is not how citizens’ rights will be protected, but another one entirely: why should our laws allow justice to reach all the way to us?

Rama has his answer ready—exactly like the former leader of the party he heads today. But will Albanian citizens and the international partners who defended and financed the justice reform be ready to make their voices heard in defence of the only instrument now opening and closing chapters on Albania’s European path?