Is Albania slipping into a one party-system ?
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Albania is now an efficient laboratory to prove how easy it is to rebuild a totalitarian society in the conditions when the country is open to the world.
The head of Albania’s opposition, Sali Berisha Albania’s former President and a former two-term Prime Minister was arrested on Saturday, Dec. 30, 2023.
Mr. Berisha's arrest follows a two-year period of dramatic developments for the Democratic Party, which has been in opposition since 2013. Led by Lulzim Basha, DP lost the parliamentary elections in April 2021 for the third time in a row. A month later, the party’s historic leader, Mr. Berisha, was declared persona non grata by the U.S. Department of State "for involvement in corruption" and "undermining democracy." In September of that same year, the then chairman of the Democratic Party, Mr. Basha, whose political career included several key cabinet-level positions as well as the mayorship of the capital city, and who had been the party head since 2013, publicly announced that he had decided to exclude Mr. Berisha from the party’s parliamentary group. This decision increased tensions and created deep divisions, and Mr. Berisha, who had resigned from the party leadership a decade earlier, began a political move aiming to return to the helm of the Democratic Party.
It led to a rift and clashes between two factions within the Democratic Party, which continued paradoxically with two winners: De facto, it became clear that Mr. Berisha was the leader around whom the majority of the parliamentary group and the majority of the membership gathered. Although Mr. Berisha's DP lost this year's local elections (held on May 14, 2023), more than 600,000 voters across Albania supported Berisha's candidates. On the other hand, the de jure winner is Mr. Basha, who continues to be the legal heir to the flag, the party's name, finances, legal rights to participate in elections with candidates and the right to have commissioners and observers in elections. In short, de jure, there is only one party led by Mr. Basha, regardless of the fact that de facto a very small group of MPs supports him, and, as proven in two electoral tests, he has underwhelming support among members and voters. Mr. Berisha and his group accused the government of continuing to hold the legal representation of the opposition through control of the judiciary, seeking to control it through a puppet opposition led by Mr. Basha.
Keeping these circumstances in mind, Mr. Berisha’s arrest, which was not unexpected due to a long series of developments, raises the question: What are the political implications? What are the implications of the arrest of the leader of the opposition for the efforts to build a justice system that is based on the rule of law and that is independent -- foremost free of control from those in political power? What implications will the imprisonment and isolation of its leader have on the Albanian opposition itself? The resulting weakening or dissolution of the opposition, accompanied by the maintaining of a puppet opposition, would raise the question: What political implications would it have for the currently fragile political system in Albania, which is currently entirely controlled by a single political party -- if not by a single person?
Who commands ‘the new justice’?
While the arrest did not come as a surprise, the extreme isolation of the opposition leader imposed by the court through a ban on communication with anyone other than his wife, with whom he shares the apartment in the eastern part of the capital, places serious questions on the legal justification and leads to suspicion of extralegal reasons behind the arrest, according to independent observers.
Placing Albania’s opposition leader in extreme isolation is almost the same as using the so-called “41-bis hard prison regime,” aimed at hardened criminals and members of the mafia or organized crime groups. The essence of the "41-bis" regime is the extreme isolation of arrested criminals to avoid the possibility of communication outside prison. It is an Italian experience that was first applied to high-level exponents of the Italian Mafia after the murders of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. In the case of Albania’s opposition leader, the only difference is that the 41-bis imprisonment is being enforced in his home, due to his advanced age.
Fatmir Limaj, a former Kosovo Prime Minister, was reserved on commenting on the reasons for the arrest of the opposition leader in Albania but stated that he was very surprised by the fact that Mr. Berisha had been placed under an extreme communication ban. Mr. Limaj said that when he had been accused in the Hague Tribunal of war crimes and crimes against humanity, during the process that exonerated him he had full freedom of communication and meetings with others outside the court. But if someone accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity was free to communicate and meet people, what charges weigh so heavily on the political opposition leader in Albania that the court has ordered his arrest and extreme isolation? In fact, there are no charges. It seems a great paradox that three years after the start of the corruption investigation, the state has not been able to file proper charges, but instead decides to arrest and force extreme isolation. The special anti-corruption prosecutor's office seems not to have enough evidence to file charges after three years of investigation.
According to independent observers, evidence was also lacking in the relevant parliamentary committee that authorized the lifting of immunity for Mr. Berisha. During the debate in the committee meeting, a high-ranking MP said, "We don't need evidence for Mr. Berisha." If evidence is not needed for the parliament to open the way for an arrest, if the prosecutor's office does not need evidence to order an arrest and extreme isolation, the natural question is: Who has ordered the arrest of the opposition leader?
Years ago, when the country suffered under communism, things were simple and at the same time terrifying and fatal. The courts were mere instruments of the party. When it came to political opponents, the party decided the sentences before the judicial process even began. When evidence was lacking, it was manufactured according to the principle of Lavrentiy Beria, the infamous head of the Soviet Union's secret service, who used to say: "Bring me a person, and I will find you a crime."
The court appoints the opposition
In one possible scenario, Mr. Berisha’s arrest and his isolation will continue before a judicial process begins, which will also take its time. It is not impossible that in the upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for the second half of 2025, the opposition leader will be either imprisoned or undergoing a trial. But it won’t be just the chairman of the Democratic Party going through a trial. So will the party itself. A DP segment led by former chairman Basha continues to own the party's name, finances, banner, flag and the legal right to nominate candidates, regardless of the fact that it has only a few MPs and almost negligible support from DP members. The legal process between the majority of the Democratic Party and this small segment claiming its inheritance has been dragging on for two years. In two electoral confrontations, both at the local level, Mr. Berisha and his party were forced to enter elections under the name and banner of another party. According to local observers, this circumstance may have harmed the Democratic Party, affecting the election results. Although under extremely unfavourable circumstances, Mr. Berisha's Democratic Party was supported by more than 600,000 voters, and some of its candidates were very close to victory. There is a good chance that in the upcoming parliamentary elections -- within the next 18 months -- the issue of the inheritance of the Democratic Party will continue to be in legal proceedings, meaning the ruling that the DP belongs to Lulzim Basha and his group will continue to be in force. All this implies that the court decides who is to serve as Albania’s opposition. Under this possible scenario, it won't be difficult for Prime Minister Edi Rama to secure a fourth four-year mandate, facing a puppet opposition.
The opposition is, in fact, the only institution not controlled by the government, and its downfall would mark the end of pluralism in Albania. In the latest parliamentary elections of 2021, an analyst wrote that Albania "traveled in time" noting: "Thirty years back, in 1991, during the first pluralist elections, after a long dictatorship, the state with all its institutions, the police, the secret service, the administration -- everything was lined up against the Democratic Party, the first non-communist party. Thirty years later we saw the same scenario. The ruling party, with all state institutions, including the contribution of organized crime, lined up against the opposition. The head of the ODIHR observation mission to the parliamentary elections thirty years later, in 2021, asserted the same conclusion that ‘there was no dividing line between the ruling party and the state.’”
It has been a while in Albania since one could talk about the existence of checks and balances: Parliament has long ended up as a government department, if not of the prime minister. The parliament’s ruling majority dismissed all the opposition's requests for interpellation as well as all the opposition's requests for the establishment of parliamentary investigative commissions, which are set in the constitution as a fundamental right of the opposition. The opposition's space in the parliament has recently been narrowed by law.
According to local observers, who seem to be joined by international observers in this view, the Constitutional Court has also failed to function as an independent power with a balancing role.
The government’s control has long been extended over other institutions too. According to a report by BIRN, almost 99 percent of the media is controlled by the government or oligarchs connected to it. University and academia in general, which are a puddle of stagnant water, are also under government control. The spectacular failure of what goes for civil society is evident in the lack of courage to develop and maintain independent attitudes, thus also ending up as playful tools of those in power.
Thirty years after the fall of communism, the political elites in Albania still reflect a feudal mentality to forever suppress non-conformist segments of society through intimidation. The culture of power politics that favours a corrupt and dishonest set of people is further entrenched when voices of dissent stay silenced or when those who are supposed to challenge the status quo are compromised or surrender.
Albania is now an efficient laboratory to prove how easy it is to rebuild a totalitarian society in the conditions where the country is open to the world.
A Pyrrhic victory
On the day the court ordered the arrest and isolation of the leader of the opposition, Sali Berisha, Prime Minister Edi Rama, who replaced Mr. Berisha at the helm of government more than ten years ago, told journalists at a press conference that the arrest of the leader of the opposition “is not a victory for him or the Socialist Party." It was not understood why Mr. Rama hastened to deny his participation in the arrest of Mr. Berisha when the journalists simply asked him to comment on the arrest, and not to clarify whether the arrest of the leader of the opposition was a victory for him. Just like those schoolchildren who are quick to assert that they have not committed the ill deed, without the teacher asking them yet.
Yes, there is no doubt that the arrest of the leader of the opposition and the initiation of corruption investigations against him is a victory for Mr. Rama. But victories are diverse. And this could be a Pyrrhic one, as a diplomat from one of the neutral countries accredited in Tirana pointed out.
