The new justice system’s only strategy is to keep politicians divided

Albania’s new justice system is trying to keep the political class divided. It is also trying to divide the Socialist Party from within. It is doing this by applying different standards not only to senior politicians from different parties, but also to senior figures inside the same party.

By using multiple standards in cases involving high-level politicians, the new justice system has crossed into politics. SPAK, GJKKO and the Supreme Court are no longer acting simply as investigative and judicial bodies. They have become instruments of political manipulation.

Many people say this is incompetence. But they do not look quite as foolish as their defenders would like us to believe.

Today, for example, the Supreme Court rejected Erion Veliaj’s request to be released from pre-trial detention. It was ruling on a request he filed 13 months ago for a lighter security measure.

The decision came after the Supreme Court had staged a show with a unifying ruling from its Criminal College, creating the impression that it would soften pre-trial detention measures. In practice, those measures have become even harsher since that ruling. The decision also came after the Constitutional Court ordered the Supreme Court to review Veliaj’s detention, overturning its first decision.

For those who remember, the argument made 13 months ago for keeping Veliaj in prison was no longer mainly the corruption accusation against him. It was that he had behaved badly in his cell: that he had spoken on the phone with relatives, insulted Ulsi Manja, and asked his wife and brother what the newspapers were writing.

Then, through the usual smear network and propaganda channels, the prosecutor in the case fed various gutter portals with lies to argue that bad behaviour in a cell justified refusing to replace the detention measure. Ulsi even added police to the operating room, as if Veliaj might kill the doctors.

In reality, Veliaj is not in prison for bad behaviour in a cell. He is in prison because of the charges raised by the prosecutor. His request not to remain in pre-trial detention was based on the lack of evidence against him. If he had behaved badly in the cell, he could have faced a separate disciplinary punishment. That should not have been used to deny him a change in detention.

In any case, this story has now become a political drama in which the main actor is not the politicians, but Albania’s new justice establishment.

The most successful political operation of the new justice system has been its ability to set one side against another: the Socialist Party against the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party against the Freedom Party, the Freedom Party against the Socialist Party, and so on. It has done this by applying different standards to different political officials under investigation, while imposing punishment through GJKKO.

That has created a cacophony of attacks and defences driven by political interest.

Berisha and his son-in-law were left free in a corruption case involving alleged state capture. Ilir Meta was arrested brutally and has been kept in detention for two years because his wife used a cousin’s credit card — a cousin who did business in Albania with Argita and Monika. Veliaj has been held in pre-trial detention for 15 months on suspicion that his wife’s NGO received donations from businesses with interests in the municipality. Ilir Beqaj, in the most absurd case of all, has been kept in prison for two years because an aide allegedly used a fake €3,000 invoice from a restaurant where Beqaj’s wife had once been a shareholder.

Through this scheme, SPAK and the courts dependent on it have won sympathy and protection from all sides by appearing balanced. In reality, they have made sure that Berisha is the least damaged figure in the whole story. They are even closing the case of the boulevard killings without questioning him at all.

Now they have moved into a new phase.

Because arrests and investigations have hit the government heavily, reaching all the way to Edi Rama’s doorstep, they have entered the internal politics of the Socialist Party. To create a cacophony of voices inside power itself, they are applying different standards within the Socialist Party too. That gives them silence from some, and attacks only from individuals directly affected by them — not from the party as a whole.

As a result, every court decision is read as either pro-Veliaj or anti-Balluku, pro-Karçanaj or anti-Beqaj. In this way, they have created a map of interests and quarrels inside the Socialist Party so that no one attacks them collectively for their shifting standards. Everyone is involved in this dirty game, from SPAK to the Supreme Court.

I am very clear about why they are doing this. They do not want power united either for or against them, just as they do not want the political class united either for or against them. They now have power of their own, and they are playing politics so that no one touches it.

But while I and others understand what they are doing, an ordinary Socialist cannot understand why someone declared to be part of a criminal group inside power is left free, while someone accused over a restaurant bill is kept in pre-trial detention for two years.

Nor can they understand how, on one hand, prosecutors complain that parliament did not authorise Balluku’s arrest, while on the other, the Supreme Court votes against itself and against the Constitutional Court in a case involving Veliaj’s detention.

This is how they have managed to create paranoia: that Berisha is feared even by his allies, and that Rama has been neutralised; that Erion Veliaj was put in prison by Belinda, while Belinda was almost put in prison by Erion; that Karçanaj was protected by Rama as part of a criminal group, while Ilir Beqaj was sacrificed by him, and so on.

By deliberately creating this divisive picture through the different standards they have applied — not because the Socialist Party imposed those standards, but because of their own malicious design — they have managed to divide everyone.

And while everyone is divided, their own inability to investigate and try cases properly passes in silence. So does the fact that they still do not have a single completed investigation, turned into a court judgment, that can stand on its own without their public propaganda.

The whole point is to create the impression that attacks against them are individual and linked to concrete interests, while they themselves are supposedly principled.

In fact, they are the only unprincipled actors in this story.

They have reduced justice reform to this: the political class and public opinion are left debating laws, while the justice system itself plays politics. It divides and rules over a frightened, corrupt and characterless political class from which it has now effectively taken all power.

Originally published in Albanian as: Politika e vetme e drejtësisë së re është t’i mbajë politikanët të përçarë përballë saj