The Lake Park with Its Eyes on the Sky — and on SPAK

By Feti ZENELI

Tirana’s Grand Park and Artificial Lake have for decades been among the capital’s most important public spaces. For thousands of citizens, this urban environment is not just a green surface, but a part of the city’s memory — a place for strolling, sport, rest and, above all, one of Tirana’s main lungs.

Precisely for this reason, every change in this space must be seen with two eyes: with the eye of the citizen who wants a more beautiful, cleaner and more functional park, but also with the critical eye of the public that notices the problems created.

Today, Tirana’s Park seems caught between two realities. On one side is the visible transformation, throughout the time Erjon Veliaj has been “de facto” at the helm of the Municipality of Tirana, of several of its spaces: pedestrian and bicycle paths, the playground, sports fields, recreational areas, landscaping interventions and the planting of thousands of trees. On the other side, citizens notice, especially over the past year, serious problems too: dried-up trees, areas in need of maintenance, litter, the degradation of some spaces and, above all, problems with sewage and water pollution in the areas near the lake.

Here the fundamental question arises: is it enough to build a park, or must its maintenance also be guaranteed? And this question grows even louder when this debate unfolds at a time when the mayor of Tirana, Erion Veliaj, is at the center of a serious criminal and institutional process.

When Erion Veliaj took over the Municipality of Tirana in 2015, the Lake Park was placed among the most visible projects of the new administration. The intervention was not simply a greening project. The aim was to turn the park into a multifunctional space: for children, athletes, cyclists, runners, families and cultural activities. One of the best-known investments was the children’s playground. According to published data on the project, its surface was about 4,000 square meters. The project was completed in 2016 and included several zones divided by age group. This project also had another aspect: strong public opposition. In 2016, activists and opposition citizens protested the manner of the intervention in the park, raising unjustified concerns about tree cutting, concretization, environmental procedures and public consultation. The matter also became a subject of court proceedings.

This episode is important even today, because it shows that the Lake Park has never been merely a technical issue. It has been and remains a public issue.

In the following years, interventions continued. Sports spaces, walking and running paths, bicycle lanes and other recreational structures were built and rehabilitated. The Municipality itself has documented the rehabilitation of football, basketball and volleyball fields in the park. In another phase, investment also went into restoring tennis spaces. The Municipality has declared that two tennis courts were returned to use after a long period of usurpation. Another symbol of the interventions was the “Moli i Dashurisë” (Pier of Love), realized with the support of the Municipality and ABI Bank, also bringing back boat rides on the lake. But perhaps the largest figure used to describe Tirana’s green transformation is that of the trees.

The Municipality of Tirana has declared that, as part of its tree-planting policy, about 126,000 trees were planted in the Lake Park in the early phases of this program, while in 2023 the Municipality announced the planting of the one-millionth tree in Tirana’s Park and the goal of reaching 2 million trees by 2030. These are important figures. But it is precisely here that another responsibility of the municipality begins.

A planted tree is not necessarily a grown tree. An inaugurated park is not necessarily a maintained park. And a completed investment is not necessarily a successful investment if, after a few years, the infrastructure depreciates and degrades.

If today a citizen enters the Lake Park and sees dried-up trees, damaged areas, litter or polluted water problems, the question should not only be: who built the park? The question should be: who maintains it? This is the difference between an urban project and a public policy. A municipality is not judged only by the number of projects it inaugurates. It is also judged by its ability to keep them functional after five, ten or fifteen years.

At this point, the Lake Park must be seen as an entire ecological and urban system.

Trees need watering, pruning and phytosanitary care. Squares need maintenance. Streets and alleys need interventions. Sewage must function. The waters discharged near the lake must be controlled. Waste must be removed. Sports spaces must be maintained. If one of these links fails, then the initial investment also loses part of its value.

Therefore, concern about the park’s current condition should not automatically be interpreted as denial of the investments made in the past. On the contrary, it should be seen as a demand that the investment not remain only in the inauguration phase.

In this sense, the Lake Park is also a test for Tirana’s public administration. If an administration manages to transform a degraded space into a frequented park, that is an achievement. But if after the transformation it fails to preserve that quality, then the initial success cannot be a justification for subsequent inaction. Today, then, the Park needs two things at once: investment and accountability. And institutional accountability cannot depend on whether the mayor is in office, in detention or out of politics.

Here the debate becomes more complicated. Erion Veliaj has been in detention since February 2025, and SPAK has concluded its investigations against him and sent the case to trial. In its official announcement of September 10, 2025, SPAK declared that Veliaj is accused of several episodes of passive corruption by senior state officials or elected local officials and of other offenses related to laundering the proceeds of crime. These are charges raised by the prosecution, not a final verdict of guilt. This point must be clear to everyone.

In a state of law, an accused person must not be treated as convicted before a final verdict. But equally important is the reverse: the fact that a person was elected by vote does not exempt him from criminal investigation.

So, neither detention is proof of guilt, nor is a political mandate immunity from justice. Here lies the balance that must be preserved. And precisely at this point the Constitutional Court’s 2026 decision becomes very important, when it reviewed Veliaj’s appeal and found constitutional problems in the way the High Court had reasoned some of its claims. In particular, the Constitutional Court accepted that the High Court had not given sufficient reasoning regarding the claim of violation of dignity and the presumption of innocence, as well as regarding the proportionality of the arrest measure in relation to the right to be elected.

The matter takes on an even more interesting dimension when linked to the mayor’s mandate. Erion Veliaj is an official directly elected by the voters of Tirana. This does not make him untouchable by justice. But it would be equally wrong for a criminal charge to automatically turn into loss of mandate. The Albanian Constitution has set a special procedure for the dismissal of a mayor. It was precisely this matter that the Constitutional Court addressed in November 2025, striking down Council of Ministers Decision No. 539 of September 25, 2025, on the dismissal of Erion Veliaj from office, deeming it incompatible with the Constitution. Consequently, it also struck down the presidential decree that had set partial elections for the Municipality of Tirana.

Without wishing to dwell longer on legal-judicial terrain, let us enter the terrain of public interest, where the ordinary citizen experiences every day the consequence of institutional decisions. The question posed is not whether Erion Veliaj should or should not face justice. That is a matter for the justice bodies and must remain so. Our question is different: what happens to the administration of the city and, in particular, to the Lake Park, when the elected head of the Municipality is absent for a long period from the real exercise of his functions?

In the period when Veliaj was at the helm of the Municipality and normally exercised his functions, the Lake Park was transformed into one of the spaces where significant investments of the Municipality of Tirana were concentrated. Here we need not enter into political assessments. It suffices to look impartially at what has been done.

So, in that period, the Park was not simply a space that existed. It had been turned into a continuous project of urban administration. And this is a very important difference. A mayor does not administer the city only by signing contracts. In the case of a space as large as the Lake Park, an entire chain of decision-making is needed: identifying problems, setting priorities, planning, financing, implementation, control and then maintenance. If one link of this chain weakens, the consequences begin to appear. And here arises the question we must ask ourselves today: is this happening with the Lake Park?

Administration is not just the Municipality building. There is a great misunderstanding in the way we talk about public administration. We often think that, if the mayor is absent, everything should continue normally, because there are directors, specialists, sectors and administration employees. Formally, this is true.

But in practice, the administration of a city does not always function like an automatic machine. Political leadership sets the pace. It sets priorities, demands accountability, controls their implementation, gathers department heads and asks them for information, intervenes when a problem is not resolved, and so on. And, above all, it creates a work culture in which the administration employee knows that someone will ask him and demand an account: “What did you do today about this problem?”

When this positive pressure of accountability is missing, the administration may continue to exist formally, but gradually lose its rhythm of action. This may be precisely one of the explanations to be examined for the perceptible difference between the Park in the period of intensive investments and the condition the citizen observes today. Naturally we cannot say that all Municipality employees do not work. Nor do we have the right to accuse individuals without evidence. But it is legitimate to ask the question: why has the mechanism of control and accountability within the administration weakened during these months that Veliaj has been in detention?

Because a tree does not dry up only for lack of rain. It may also dry up because it was not watered in time. A space does not degrade only because it is old. It may degrade because it was not maintained. A sewage system does not get blocked only by the weather. It may also get blocked because it was not checked. And for each of these problems there is an administrative link that must react.

Here we have a paradox that deserves attention. The more you invest in a public work, the greater the responsibility to maintain it becomes. If millions of lek have been invested in the Lake Park in infrastructure, sports environments, playgrounds, roads and greenery, then every year of poor maintenance is a loss of part of that investment. If a tree is planted and it dries up, it is not only the tree that is lost. The sapling is lost, the planting work, the transport, the previous watering, the investment made and, above all, the time needed for that tree to grow. This is why the Park’s maintenance must be seen as investment, not as a secondary expense. In fact, for an urban park, maintenance is part of the investment itself.

What happens when accountability remains suspended? Here we return to the lack of leadership.

In a large administration like the Municipality of Tirana, responsibilities are distributed. But the distribution of responsibilities must not lead to the dispersal of responsibility to the point where no one bears responsibility anymore. This is one of the classic risks of public administration. A problem is identified and the paperwork passes from hand to hand. Besides a signature, it also awaits a decision, then the follow-up of its implementation… Meanwhile, the tree dries up.

This may seem like an exaggerated picture, but in every large administration there is the risk of bureaucratization and loss of individual accountability. The political leader, in this case, has an irreplaceable role: to cut that link of the chain when it becomes an obstacle to the public interest. This is one of the reasons why the presence of an active leader can have an impact even beyond his signature.

He sets pace and results, and takes the problem out of the administrative file, placing it on concrete terrain to give it a solution.

And it is precisely here that the citizen has the right to demand accountability. Was Veliaj the “engine” of investments? Without wishing to do propaganda for any individual, it is difficult to deny that Erion Veliaj’s leadership period coincided with a large number of urban interventions in Tirana and, in particular, with significant investments in the Lake Park. And he achieved this by making, first, the municipality institution functional and efficient. Apparently today we are suffering the price of the lack of leadership. Perhaps this is the least discussed consequence of such a situation.

When the head of an institution is absent for a long period, it is not only the individual who loses the opportunity to exercise duty. There is a risk that the institution’s rhythm is lost. And a large city cannot put its problems on “pending.” Tirana continues to grow. The number of residents and users of public spaces continues to be high. The needs for greenery, cleaning, transport, water, sewage and maintenance continue every day.

Therefore, if political leadership weakens, the administration must find ways to compensate for this gap with more institutional discipline. Otherwise, what we might call an administration on standby is created: the offices are open, the employees are there, documents circulate, but decision-making and accountability lose their speed of resolution. And the citizen understands this not from the Municipality’s organizational chart. He understands it when he passes through the Park, when he sees the dried-up tree, the litter or the polluted water of the Lake from sewage discharges into it. And in this case, he does not ask which director has the competence, but: “Where is the Municipality?”

Therefore the Park must not become a victim of a political battle. This is perhaps the most important point to be understood correctly. Tirana’s Artificial Lake Park does not belong to Veliaj. It does not belong to the majority, nor to the opposition. It belongs to the citizens…