For Rama's government, today was a day of 'black eyes'

Alfred Lela

Erion Veliaj appeared today — subdued, dressed as if for his final ordeal or redemption — at the doors of a state that, for many long months, has treated him like a criminal without ever convicting him through a fair judicial process.

Ironically, this happened only hours before his sister-enemy-turned-rival, Belinda Balluku, crossed the threshold of another institution —the Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPAK) —to be questioned and formally charged over one or more allegedly corrupt affairs of her own.

The fact that both stood today at the entrances of these institutions does not mean that justice has treated them equally. That very fact — among others — is enough to see and understand what is happening, and to conclude that there is no need to choose between the socialists Balluku and Veliaj, to side with one or the other. What must be underlined, however, is that two different standards applied to two officials become the same double standard for every citizen who may one day have to pass through those same doors.

To banish Erion Veliaj physically, politically, and even humanly, an entire para-political and para-state labyrinth was set in motion, involving elements of the judiciary, the police, undercover agents, and figures within the Socialist Party. This behavior has revealed that the “executive” arm of justice — and the penitentiary machinery of government — can be used as instruments of torture, a hallmark of authoritarian or pre-totalitarian states.

It matters little whether the target is Sali Berisha, Ilir Meta, Arben Ahmetaj, or Erion Veliaj. The crossing of legal, political, and human boundaries should alarm anyone watching from the seats of the arena or from the sofas of lazy judgment — whether in luxury living rooms or the humblest homes, from the villas of Rolling Hills to the mountain huts of Rodogosh.

Erion Veliaj does not seem defeated, even if he has suffered from this treatment. Excess, as with all excesses, has turned him from a poster boy of (presumed) corruption into a political-judicial martyr.

It does not matter whether Veliaj wins or loses his legal battle for what in English is called due process. Either outcome — victory or defeat — will speak volumes about the kind of state we have built thirty-three years after the fall of the regime we believed to be the last chapter in the cycle of repression against Albanians.

Since the episode of the National Theatre, I have regarded Erion Veliaj not only as a political adversary but also as harmful to Tirana. Yet that does not mean he should be pre-emptively lynched to serve the political ends of any faction. Still less should he escape investigation (or punishment) for the Theatre, the incinerator, or the “5D” affair, only to be disgraced instead for his wife’s dresses or concert appearances.

Today, at the doors of the Constitutional Court and SPAK, two people appeared — and two pairs of eyes. One pair has, for months on end, witnessed how collaborators and friends became worse than political opponents; how the detention cell in Durrës turned into a miniature Guantánamo.

Another eye, carefully concealing its bruise, will now fight for the opposite — for the right not to knock on doors that no longer open.

And so it goes. A power whose state cannot see through the lenses of law possesses instruments of violence that make you shut your eyes or turn your head away from what happens before them.

Those who stare wide-eyed, or whose eyes moisten at what they see, must still have sight for justice — even when the image reflected in their pupils is that of the enemy.

A system like today’s, which seeks only to astonish and to gratify the most primitive human instincts, is anti-human and anti-legal.