TIRANA, July 14 – Prime Minister Edi Rama has described as a test for the government the vote in the Assembly to remove the immunity of former Deputy Prime Minister Arben Ahmetaj, a member of the Albanian Parliament.
“Today we voted on a request by SPAK to authorize the arrest of a deputy, who has covered important duties in our governments as a minister and deputy prime minister. This is the highest official who has ended up in the investigative network of SPAK and it was another test for us, as the initiators of the Justice Reform when we were in the opposition, its determined leader when we came to power and its steadfast guarantors since the reform was approved and its implementation began,” the Prime Minister declared in a press statement from the Prime Minister’s office on Friday.
Rama said that the justice of the quarter century of transition had turned impunity into a humiliating norm for Albanians and Albania.
“Whoever has heard me since the beginning of the time, I believe should remember that I have been looking for this Reform very persistently,” he said. According to the Prime Minister, it had not happened that a law violator in power was treated like an ordinary person in violation of the law.
“Never since 1912, until the years when we, the Socialist Party of Albania, entered the ‘sea on foot’ in order to implement the Reform in Justice has it ever happened that a law violator in power was treated like an ordinary person in violation of law,” he said.
The only case, he noted, was the arrest of former Prime Minister Fatos Nano.
The Assembly of Albania approved on Friday in a plenary session with 117 votes in favor the request of the Special Prosecution Against Corruption and Organized Crime, for granting authorization by the Assembly for the arrest and exercise of control of the residence of the former Deputy Prime Minister, Arben Ahmetaj, the deputy elected in 2021.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Arben Ahmetaj was not present in the Assembly because he has left Albania in an ‘unknown’direction, although there are rumors that he is in Britain with his family.
In his long statement PM Rama did not say a word if he had any responsibility for the huge corrupt affairs of Ahmetaj as head of the government in which the accused was the number two of the executive and one of the main figures in the ruling Socialist Party. /argumentum.al
