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OP-ED

The facts are with Berisha... so much the worse for the facts!?

Politiko 2023-12-21 16:19:54

The facts are with Berisha... so much the worse for the facts!?

Alfred Lela

Yesterday, I met Peter Lucas, the American journalist of Albanian origin, at his home in Westford. Among the first things he told me was that, between the cases of Donald Trump and Sali Berisha, he saw similarities in political persecution.
After I left, on my way to Boston, more than about the similarities of the courts' roles in the political and electoral process in Washington and Tirana, I was thinking about why people like Peter Lucas are rare.
Such is the sense of freedom or what they choose to do with it. Lucas told me his friends in Tirana were surprised by his pro-Berisha attitude.
What the 'surprised' don't understand about this 'turn' is that the facts can also be in favor of Berisha. Accustomed to being captives of anti-Berisha attitudes and processing them for about three decades, they cannot separate the anti-Berisha sentiment from the positions of Berisha as a person and a politician concerning the facts and different times.
In this sense, they fall into an onanism of the mind, a kind of psycho-emotional lockdown that, wanting to see the chosen subject of revenge as a victim, also makes the truth a victim.
Peter Lucas manages to make this division; he separates his criticism of "the first Berisha" in power in 1992-1996 from the current political-judicial processes and developments. His internal freedom enables this. He does not need to assert himself through hatred and permanent retaliation against Berisha.
There is a need to explain what are the facts that the professional haters of Berisha ignore:

-Sali Berisha is today the most popular right-wing politician, and he has proven this in the last two elections despite all efforts to harm him.
-Sali Berisha and the DP seal and political and judicial representation are held hostage in Albania's courts.
-Sali Berisha and the opposition were denied the constitutional right of 8 parliamentary committees.
-Sali Berisha was refused the nomination by the members of the "Together We Win" coalition to be the head of the opposition list in the May 14 elections.
-Sali Berisha and the opposition parliamentarians are denied the right to choose the head of the group in the Assembly.
-Sali Berisha and the parliamentary group were denied the right to have representatives in the parliamentary commissions, one of them of Electoral Reform.
-Sali Berisha and 28 democratic MPs were refused the right to invite the Constitutional Court to interpret the Constitution. This decision is unconstitutional and illogical because the Constitutional Court exists precisely to interpret the Constitution, as the name suggests.
-Sali Berisha, the Democratic Party, and its representatives in the Assembly, municipal councils, etc., have submitted dozens of lawsuits to SPAK. In many of them, the subject is Prime Minister Rama and Mayor Veliaj. The prosecution refuses to open a case against them.
-Sali Berisha, three years after Taulant Balla's lawsuit, has never been called to be questioned about the "Partizani complex" and is still a "person under investigation" today.
-Sali Berisha is an MP of Albania, not appointed but elected, and the opposition leader; as such, any measure against him first needs the permission of the Parliament, which is based on the Constitution, article 73/2.
SPAK's refusal to respect the Constitution and the Parliament opened a spiral that pushed the issue to political extremity.
SPAK's decision to ask the Assembly a while later does not change the initial violation. The persistence of the Prosecutor's Office to punish the subject of a breach produced by those who were not the subject, i.e., increasing the measure against Sali Berisha, while nothing has changed either qualitatively or quantitatively, marks the institution, at best, for unprofessionalism, and in the worst as political.
- The unilateral change of the Parliament's regulation to punish the opposition MPs with up to 2 months' suspension is a temporary removal of the mandate, another mutilation of the opposition's opportunities to act.

All this overview, not exhaustive, of the political landscape around Sali Berisha and the opposition, demonstrates the efforts to eradicate the Democratic Party and its allies by doing what has worked since homo sapiens: cut the head off the body!
These are the facts; only after we agree on them can we speculate with opinions.
Peter Lucas, being a free man who can separate facts from personal attitudes, highlights the persecution of Sali Berisha. The fact that yesterday he wrote about the persecution that President Berisha was accused of perpetrating on political opponents does not prevent him today from standing up against the persecution and politicization of the courts.
And this is its difference from others: anti-Berishism does not have to be a way of life.