The Makeshift State and the Republic of Prosecutors and Judges

By Edmond Spaho

Some time ago, based on the developments in the justice system over salaries, I used a vulgar term to describe the state we have built, the makeshift state [shteti i leshit].

After the developments of the last few days, I think not only that we have built a makeshift state, which you won’t find in any European country for the absurdities it produces, but this state is also dangerous, since one part of it is giving ultimatums to the other part of the makeshift state.

First, I want to stress that all this fuss of recent days would have been easily manageable if we did not have at the helm such an arrogant and irresponsible government, which does not respect the Constitutional Court for the deadlines it set to resolve the issue of the justice system’s salaries.

If the government had prepared a serious proposal, supported by arguments, passed it through the parliamentary economy committee, held hearings with stakeholders and explained the entire history of the deformation of the justice salary system and the causes of the deformation, today we would not be in conditions of shameful institutional clashes, which clearly show that we have laughable states and statesmen. But this cannot be corrected now.

For the ordinary citizen it should be clarified that in 2016, when the justice reform began to be implemented, based on the very low level of salaries in Albania (the lowest in Europe), and to ensure them financial protection from the lure of corruption, it was decided that the salaries of the justice system, like nowhere in Europe, would be taken out of the country’s salary pyramid.

This meant that we consciously accepted that the salaries of SPAK and GJKKO judges and prosecutors would be larger than that of the President of the Republic, while those of prosecutors and judges of the general system would be above the salary level of high leadership functions such as, for example, MPs.

In 2023, the government, with an entirely necessary action, doubled the salaries of the public administration, or in other words, the salaries of the salary pyramid in the Republic of Albania.

This was done to put an end to the laughable salaries the state distributed to its administration, so that they would become comparable with the countries of the region.

But appetite comes with eating.

Judges and prosecutors jumped up and although they were outside the country’s salary system as an exceptional case, they demanded that their salaries also be doubled.

The government rightly did not accept this request and gave the justice system’s salaries a modest increase, which left all salary levels of the justice system above the MP’s salary level and all salary levels of the special prosecution and court above the salary level of the President of the Republic.

Compare how much judges’ salaries were after the increase in 2023 and how much the justice system demands them to be with the self-increase they made:

The gross salary of an MP today is 310,000 lekë while the salary of the President of the Republic is 435,621 lekë.

Look, dear citizens, the judges and prosecutors of the general justice system demand to have a salary 1.83 times larger than MPs and 1.3 times larger than the President’s, while SPAK and GJKKO judges and prosecutors would have a salary 3 times higher than MPs and 2.3 times higher than the President of the Republic’s.

Taking advantage of the arrogance and irresponsibility of the government, which did not address this problem with a law and in time, the KLP and KLGJ, without any legal basis, made a decision setting the justice system’s salaries according to their own appetite.

Today they demand accountability and threaten that if the decision they made on their salaries is not implemented, they will suspend work in the courts.

The threats come not only from judges and prosecutors as individuals, but from the entire pyramid of institutions and leaders of the new justice system we have created, who show a marked lack of formation and public ethics.

Furthermore, in a scandalous and absurd act, judges and prosecutors complain against their own state about why it does not approve the self-increase of salaries they made.

No more and no less, but to the judges and prosecutors… alias to themselves. Am I not right in this case to call the Albanian state a makeshift state and our Republic the Republic of Judges and Prosecutors?

If judges and prosecutors close the courts because their salaries do not increase 2 to 3 times above the President’s salary, then why should we citizens not have the right to rise and protest at the doors of the insatiable courts which demand to skin our taxes?

Why should we keep such a caste on our necks when the new justice is even more shameless than the old justice?

A call to opposition colleagues: you are in opposition today but it is outside political logic to come out in support of this madness with an additional cost of 40 million euros a year just because you are opponents of the majority. One day you may be in the majority and you will pay for the madness you are supporting today.

The country’s citizens are watching you and will give to everyone involved in this Albanian madness what they deserve. /Taken from Edmond Spaho’s Facebook/