Full speech / Rama: “Corruption is being hit, Albania will not turn back”

The full address of Prime Minister Edi Rama from Rinas on the arrest of former SHISH chief Vlora Hyseni

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I have just returned from New York, where, as you know, I represented Albania during the United Nations General Assembly week. I decided to address you immediately from here, at ‘’Nënë Tereza’’ airport, because the developments of recent days, following the house-arrest measure imposed on the former head of the Intelligence Service, demand an immediate and direct address. Face to face.

It was undoubtedly an extreme measure, considering it involves the exposure of a very key state institution. But I have neither the right nor the intention to enter into the content of the case file, the evaluation of evidence, or the reasons that led the prosecution to request it and the court to impose it. I have never done so before, and I will not do so in this case either. Every reasonable doubt, about anyone whatsoever, must be investigated to the end.

Every charge brought, against anyone whatsoever, must be proven or overturned through an independent, impartial and regular judicial process. Every restriction of liberty imposed by the prosecution, against anyone without parliamentary immunity, is challenged only in court — not from the Prime Minister’s podium, nor from the pulpits of politics. These markers of my conduct and that of the governing majority toward individual justice cases have been and remain as they are. For everyone.

But on the other hand, respect for the independence of justice does not mean silence even when a principled concern emerges during the activity of its bodies. Specifically, in this case, beyond and above the individual criminal matter, there is another principled, state-level fact that cannot be ignored as if it never happened.

During the imposition of the measure and the judicial administration of the case file, an institution of particular sensitivity for the security and reputation of the state was exposed. It was exposed to the potential of great damage, which could and should have been fully prevented. Investigative case-file data had to flood social channels and media stalls before the court ordered — like the barn door after the harvest — the restriction of their publication. Naturally, with no success whatsoever.

When an investigation climbs to the head of the country’s intelligence service, then this is no longer the problem of an independent power. This is a problem of the entire state, and that is why this hands-off, laissez-faire approach has left all our partners speechless as well. In other words, it is surely not the first time in world history that a secret-service chief has been taken as a defendant, but it is the first time in world history that the secret-service institution has become a national and international target of media gossip, because none of the measures that states take in such an unfortunate case as this were taken.

To be very clear: the investigation and trial of Vlora Hyseni are the exclusive duty of justice. This is beyond any discussion. While the protection of the State Intelligence Service — and not only it — from any unnecessary collateral damage is the duty of the entire state. Nor should this be up for any discussion. The separation of powers can never appear as separation from state responsibility. And here we come back, in fact, to a point we have encountered before, which is why the time has come to address it together and seriously.

I believe the Security Council, convened tomorrow by the President of the Republic, is the right place to reflect on institutional responsibilities and discuss the guarantees that must protect our institutions — above all those of national security — when their leaders or employees slip off the rails and become the subject of a criminal investigation. As I said when the arrest measure was announced, I valued Vlora Hyseni’s work at the helm of the Intelligence Service. Likewise, our international partners’ evaluations of her work have been consistently very positive.

Whereas these days’ attempts to explain her appointment at the helm of SHISH through all kinds of conspiracy fantasies have absolutely nothing to do with the truth. As usual, the truth is simple. She first began working closely with me as the adviser covering relations with the security institutions. After a not-short period in that role, and based on the excellent references received from partner services — I underline, excellent — she was appointed head of the Service.

Nor is it up for discussion today that the former head of the Intelligence Service has opened a very difficult account with justice, besides entering into a great moral debt with this country, where she received unsparing trust. But, likewise, it is not up for discussion that this country never becomes more just when people placed under prosecution investigation are lynched on media stalls, as if they were witches tied to medieval pyres. Nor does this society become better when it fans the flames of those pyres with the embers of social-channel hatred, while investigative secrets are chewed and re-chewed in the bazaar, supposedly, secrets dragged into the open from inside the justice institutions, reducing the presumption of innocence to a burnt rag.

No one can claim that the media should keep investigative secrets, because the media exist to uncover, not to cover up. That is why the problem does not begin with the informal spokespersons of the justice courtyard on screens. They are used as journalists by certain prosecutors or judges to declare people guilty before the trial has even begun — just as in a dictatorship, where once the propaganda tools finish their work, the trial remains a mere formality. That is why this ever more worrying problem, which begins with legitimized lawlessness inside the courtyard of justice, where the investigative secret is abused to lynch, humiliate, subjugate and publicly condemn a person before the court judges them, can no longer be sidestepped.

Justice cannot fight lawlessness in the courtyard of politics, business or crime by normalizing lawlessness in its own courtyard. The long-awaited independence of justice can in no way appear as independence from the Constitution, as irresponsibility toward the law, as detachment from human rights and as disregard for social ethics.

The prosecution has the right and the duty to investigate. The court has the right and the duty to judge. The media has the right and the duty to uncover, inform, demand accountability. But no one has the right to declare another guilty before trial, let alone then dehumanize them worldwide. The rule of law is proven at every step twice over: with the courage to investigate the powerful and with the discipline to protect the human rights of the one being investigated — even if that person is the greatest criminal.

As far as I am concerned, as with anyone else, in any other case, when a senior official opens an account with justice, this one of the former head of the Intelligence Service is an individual matter between her and the justice bodies. I have nothing else to add on this topic in itself. But I still have something to say about the political meaning of this development, because once again a general indictment has been raised to the skies, against the government and, of course, against me personally, with the unrestrained refrain, “Corruption – Corruption – Corruption, corruption is drowning us”…

Dear voters, regardless of your convictions or the direction of your vote: the fact that justice also touches people with high functions, even members of the government or its collaborators, in no way proves that corruption is drowning us or that corruption is growing. On the contrary.

The fact that, in the episodes of this new chapter — useful and healthy for Albania — independent investigations open accounts with justice for individuals vested with power or tied to power does not prove at all that the governing majority is corrupt. On the contrary. This fact, these episodes, this new history of justice in Albania — where never before has there been any kind of independent justice, because never before has there been a political leadership interested in giving justice independence, nor a political force ready to support an independent justice, taking its costs upon its own skin — prove entirely, utterly the opposite of the refrain, “Corruption – Corruption – Corruption, corruption is drowning us”…

They prove that corruption is not growing, but is being hit. They prove that the governing majority is not corrupt, but is unwavering in supporting the independent bodies of the fight against corruption, even and above all within its own ranks. They prove that we are engaged to the end, both for further anti-corruption reforms and measures by the government, and for bearing the political costs brought by the anti-corruption engagement of the independent justice bodies.

Certainly, I am keenly aware that every time a new case emerges, where a collaborator or a senior or junior official is entered into the book of accounts with justice, the old, vulgar and mocking refrain regains momentum against me: “How could I not have known; how could I myself not be involved; how can I say again that they ate the pears behind my back; how, how, how…” Because according to that refrain, the chief culprit in every case is precisely me — I who wanted it when no one believed it possible, who led it when many wanted it dead, and who defend the Justice Reform like no one else.

But a prime minister cannot be judged on the absurd claim that no person tied to him will ever break the law, because otherwise the lawbreaker is he himself.

The Prime Minister and the entire governing majority are judged by the stance they take and the action they perform when justice’s account is opened for someone among them or near them. Do they justify it? Do they defend it? Do they oppose justice, or do they let justice do its work and the individual bear his own responsibility? I promised the rebirth of a ruined Albania and Albania’s European state-building — not a governance in which no one would ever step on a rotten plank, nor an angelic administration where the rascals would evaporate at the fish’s command when told the word.

That would be nice, but no one in the world has achieved it. And above all, I pledged to liberate and make independent justice and to end impunity for powerful people, regardless of political affiliation or proximity to the top of political power. And this is the historic change happening today, while the pertinent question is not how the prime minister could not know when his subordinate breaks the law, but how the prime minister could know that his subordinate is thinking of breaking the law or is secretly acting in violation of the law. The prime minister can neither predict every individual’s behavior in the face of the temptations of power, nor is he allowed to eavesdrop on his collaborators about what they do under the rug, nor can he read someone’s mind when it begins to be wound up to work behind his back.

That is why democracies have government bodies, but they also have independent justice bodies, and that is why I demanded the Justice Reform with such persistence and support the new justice with such will — beyond all its gaps and missteps, as painful as they are understandable. Now, I surely, and I say this sincerely, must have my faults, undoubtedly.

But what I can say with the greatest certainty is that never, in no case and for no reason, can anyone make me a party to anything that, in the 28 years and 4 months of my public service, may have touched Albanians’ money, Albanians’ property, Albanians’ interests. Certainly, plenty may come forward and speak in my name, or against my name. They may say that behind a personal request or their private business stands me. They may say that behind a corrupt deed or a criminal act stands me. They may tell tales of the architects of the whole world gathered around me to launder the money of my towers.

They may recount stories of all of Albania’s criminals gathering to win elections for me. They may say that Albania’s oligarchs earn their money with me, that I sell them pieces of Albania under the table and live in luxurious palaces, and fly across all the skies of the world in private jets, paid tens of millions of euros with Albanians’ taxes.

All of these and much more than these they have said and may say again and again, along with new ones that their minds, fantasized by the struggle for power or hatred, will give birth to. But a single piece of evidence — that some mother’s son has a single penny of his in my pocket or in our family’s income, given in exchange for a single signature cast by me as mayor or as prime minister — they can never produce. Because that kind of phenomenon has not yet been born.

I repeat, I surely may have my faults; I am no angel and infallible I am not, no, no. But the fault that with absolute certainty I have never committed is trading for money or property the power that Albanians asked of me to revive Tirana and then Albania as well. Whoever knows me knows well what I speak of. Whoever has benefited from constitutional development rights to property or lawful investment opportunities, also thanks to my signature, knows just as well what I speak of. I know well what I speak of too when I tell you that my power has never been used to give dark favors or to receive unlawful gifts. Today, in the Prime Ministry of the Republic of Albania, there is a museum of the gifts the prime minister receives.

To those scribblers in parliamentary suits or with crow and raven beaks instead of lips, who, among their many outpourings in Albania’s public square, have also produced a super-expensive watch that I supposedly received as a gift from organized crime, I say that in that museum there are almost a dozen expensive and super-expensive watches given to me personally — not by criminals, but by powerful friends or highly honored visitors. But unlike my predecessor, who swallowed them all together with all the other gifts of his eight years in the prime minister’s office, I have registered all gifts to the prime minister as property of the Albanian state. Because what comes to me as prime minister and what is due to me as prime minister does not come to be taken to my home, nor to be kept for myself.

That is why, for example, privately I always travel just like every other Albanian, or why, for instance, my car is rented by the party, not bought by the prime ministry, since it is also used for party travel and not only government travel. I say it again, sincerely: surely I have my faults, and in the 28 years and 4 months of my public service I may even have made many more mistakes than the not-few I know of myself. But never, not ever, have money, property or favors of any kind against the law been able to bend my conviction that on this path, I am here to give, not to take. I am here to leave a name, not to fatten my pocket. I am here to make history, not to make wealth. I am here to transform Albania, not to deform myself. And precisely for history, for the name, for Albania, I love this country with its head held high, with the flag as high as possible, equal among equals, at the highest tables.

I want it in the European Union within this decade, with the rule of law and with justice independent of me and of every government and prime minister after me. That is why today, when I have stopped in this hall, with the topic of justice having precisely descended, and when all my opponents — from the rabble of the opposition streets to the failed dregs of former government streets — think they have invented the “wonder bomb” that will bring Rama to the ground, “Corruption – Corruption – Corruption, corruption is drowning us,” I want to be very clear with all of you: let them throw that bomb morning, noon and night on television screens and let them detonate it every hour and moment in social mirrors, as if the parrot-like repetition of a filthy word aloud could undo the purity of my all-out fight, which, whether those who did not want it like it or not, returned to this country its capital buried under garbage and for a decade has been transforming Albania and rebuilding the Albanian state.

And however much they repeat it, “Corruption – Corruption – Corruption, corruption is drowning us,” the truth is that in no country drowned in corruption is there a frontal fight against corruption. There is only harmonious coexistence with corruption. In no country drowned in corruption does the prosecution investigate people vested with power. It protects them. In no country drowned in corruption does justice touch ministers, former ministers, MPs, mayors, directors or people tied to the governing majority — it only sits and waits for the order of power to strike its opponents.

We have all lived in the country where the prosecution’s summonses for those responsible for state killings became toilet paper for the prime minister’s office, which publicly denigrated the prosecutor general as a “boulevard tramp,” simply because she attempted to do her job even a little. We have all lived in the country where the republic’s tax director stayed at the head of duty from house arrest, and where 26 innocent people killed in the explosion of a corrupt defense-ministry project were treated as 26 victims of a natural disaster.

I know that even today, all day long, those four killed on the boulevard have still not received justice. I also know — I know what’s what — that with the money of the Gërdec death factory, financed by the still-uninvestigated culprits to this day, the rise of a media laundromat was funded, which to this day, all day long, concocts those anti-government “wonder bombs,” “Corruption – Corruption – Corruption, corruption is drowning us.”

I also know that another television station, “Corruption – Corruption – Corruption, corruption is drowning us,” fed by the money of mind-boggling fiscal evasion, has taken an entire prosecution in Tirana hostage, where instead of summoning the big evader to account for the millions owed to the state, the frightened and cowed prosecutors open cases to frighten the tax employees who denounce the evader.

I know that the Albania of until yesterday, of harmony with corruption and injustice, has not definitively left our lives. We still have the countless tails of that country under our feet in daily life.

But I know for certain that the time is gone when in this country justice was a closed door whenever the right knocked and an open room whenever evil wanted a deal. Gone is the time when political power and impunity were one and the same thing.

That time is gone because I, the Socialist Party and the majority of Albanians who trusted us, waded into the sea on foot and took upon ourselves the deepest, most challenging and most painful reform in the history of the Albanian state. The reform of reforms, the challenge of challenges, the overturning of all overturnings.

We took upon ourselves the act of handing over the sword of justice, from the hands of the political power that had held that sword since 1912, into the hands of a new power — that of a liberated and independent justice, by our will.

I made that handover not because I was naive, nor because I did not know that the sword would seek heads in our ranks, but because it was mine, ours and no one else’s — the burden of that great political sacrifice, but at the same time the great, strategic and decisive investment for Albania’s democratic and European future.

While today, for the first time in the history of the Albanian state, Albania’s institutional system itself is displaying a capacity for self-cleansing it never had — this is a great national achievement, whose authorship, forgive me, I do not negotiate with anyone; it is mine and the Socialist Party of Albania’s.

The independence of justice did not fall from the sky. Time did not bring it. Nor did America or Europe. They helped, yes, even a lot, but without me and the Socialist Party they would have done the same Noc Rrok they did with previous governments, until the day we waded into that sea on foot — or what they are doing with some other governments around the region.

And certainly, the independence of justice was not brought by the DP, the crows, the ravens and the failed dregs, who today shout “Corruption – Corruption – Corruption, corruption is drowning us” and see SPAK as the sole fatal weapon against me — me, who have beaten and beaten them in every election, and who beat them in these fabricated battles of the political and media arena of accusations and slanders, whenever their minds are fooled into thinking they cornered me and dug my grave.

But of course, it is not their defeat that keeps me up at night, nor is their occasional rooster-crowing the reason for this special address. This address is tied to what is happening with corruption and with justice, which is one of the historic results of the mission for Albania 2030 in the European Union. Corruption remains a dangerous shadow along our path, but the historic change is that today it faces a different system, in which bodies have been shaped and are developing that investigate, charge, judge and confiscate in full freedom and independence. Until yesterday corruption was the system; today the system is fighting corruption, and this is an epochal change that has begun.

The system’s self-cleansing in this still-forming phase of Albania’s new European state is noisy. It is even sometimes dirty and often very painful. It touches and wounds even innocent individuals, just as it mistreats and dehumanizes even the guilty. But the system’s self-cleansing is a long-awaited development in the organism of the state, after an agony as long as the history of the Albanian state. The organism of the state is gaining immunity from the old diseases, and when this noisy, dirty and painful phase has passed; when the names, secrets, spittle, grunts and shrieks of the media stalls have faded; when the smoke of the digital mirrors has dispersed and the dust of the Justice Reform construction site has settled, then everyone will see that these developments are a vital part of the radical, irreversible change Albania is undergoing today.

Today I have returned to Albania, but Albania will not turn back. No one and nothing will stop it, will stop us, will stop me.