Trying to turn SPAK into a tool of the revolution

Fatos Lubonja has called on SPAK to follow the protest movement’s lead. In a way, he wants it to carry out an agenda set by the protesters on the boulevard.

SPAK already has serious political problems, and it is not always in the right. Some prosecutors allow personal ambition to become a political problem. There are also questions about how SPAK is handling the real allegations against Sali Berisha, while its investigation into him remains largely cosmetic. Some prosecutors are simply not up to the job. Until now, that is where the debate has stood.

The protesters are now demanding something different. They want SPAK to become their instrument and take direction from the street on whom to investigate, whom to jail and even how investigations should be carried out. That is new.

Until now, SPAK’s critics have focused on specific cases and specific failures.

The protesters want to go further. They want SPAK to carry out their political agenda.

The justice reform is already fighting for survival. Its main problem is that the justice system has gained independence without becoming capable of delivering justice. Now the protesters want to take away that independence as well and bring it under their control.

There is a reason they want SPAK to adopt their agenda.

At first, the protest presented itself as a civic movement and made no such demands. Now it has returned to its true form. It is dominated by ignorant and often irrational leaders, backed by a handful of tiny political parties whose rhetoric grows more vicious as their political weight declines.The protesters have realised that the power they hoped to use to bend society to their will is gone.

Their only hope now, it seems, is to invoke SPAK’s name to intimidate the public and still appear strong.

First they threatened to overthrow the government. Then they threatened beatings. Later, they were reduced to throwing eggs. Now, to keep up the appearance of strength, they are trying to present SPAK as the enforcement arm of the protest movement.

In fact, they have already had every chance to use SPAK’s work for their cause. On the fourth day of the protests, SPAK placed a freeze on land in Zvërnec and opened an investigation into the former owners over questions about how the property had been acquired.

Perhaps the timing was a coincidence. But even if SPAK did it deliberately to help the protest, the action was taken. The problem was that the protest had nothing to do with Zvërnec and made no use of the case.

They do not want to use the work SPAK already does. They want SPAK to do exactly what they say. Their idea of justice is worse than that of a local Communist-era party chief, when justice meant staging a trial in a cinema against people targeted for watching foreign films or performances. Those trials, too, were carried out in the name of building a new Albania.

Originally published in Albanian as: Përpjekja për ta bërë edhe SPAK-un organ të revolucionit