The republic of sophisms

By Vangjel Stamo

The High Court’s latest decision, which upheld the “prison arrest” security measure for Tirana mayor Erion Veliaj, should have marked a moment of reflection and accountability for the governing majority.

Instead, the public was treated to one of the purest displays of political hypocrisy, through a public statement by Prime Minister Edi Rama. Describing Veliaj’s continued detention as a “unique calvary in the history of democratic Europe” and lamenting that Tirana was left “headless” once again, Rama not only openly attacked the decision-making of the highest body of justice, but also revealed a dangerous political mentality — one according to which “corruption by senior officials does not constitute a danger to society”.

Instead of acting according to the most minimal principles of law and public morality — demanding immediate administrative replacement and total distancing from corrupt affairs — the head of government chose the path of legal sophisms and defensive rhetoric. This approach proves once again that political leadership in Albania does not see massive, endemic corruption as a wound destroying the country, but as a “technical problem” or a “legal experiment” hampering the functioning of the power machine.

Veliaj has been in pre-trial detention since February 2025, when the Special Court, at SPAK’s request, imposed the “prison arrest” measure on him. He is accused by SPAK of passive corruption, money laundering and abuse of office, which allege that he and his wife benefited money and assets from entities that had received public funds or permits from the Municipality of Tirana, and that in several urban-planning decisions there were property interests linked to his family. The Tirana mayor has denied the accusations, claiming through his defense that SPAK has not presented concrete evidence of corruption and money laundering and that the proceedings against him have been accompanied by procedural violations and infringements of defense rights.

The “prison arrest” measure was upheld by the Special Appeals Court and, initially, by the High Court as well. In May 2026, the Constitutional Court partially accepted Veliaj’s appeal, annulled the High Court’s previous decision and sent the case back for reconsideration. On September 15, 2026, after reconsideration, the High Court’s Criminal Chamber once again upheld the Special Appeals Court’s decision and, consequently, the “prison arrest” measure.

In his statement, Edi Rama said that one million residents of Tirana are suffering the consequences of an “unseen and unheard-of legal, social and economic experiment”. This kind of formulation is a direct insult to citizens’ intelligence. The only unseen experiment in this country is not the work of the justice bodies, which dare to put an accused official behind bars, but the governing model in which public money and citizens’ taxes evaporate through full-fledged corruption schemes.

When the High Court refuses to release a senior official, it does so because it assesses that there are suspicions and circumstances justifying the continuation of the security measure. But for the prime minister, “the evidence of extreme dangerousness has still not become visible”. By this standard, the theft of millions of euros, abuse of office and money laundering at citizens’ expense are apparently not “high dangerousness”. Dangerousness, according to this mentality, is constituted only by street crimes, while white-collar crime — which robs an entire generation of its future — must be treated with silk gloves and constitutional tolerance.

The use of the metaphor that Tirana is languishing “with its head cut off” is the backbone of Rama’s hypocrisy. The idea of the city or the state as a political body is very old. In classical and especially medieval thought, society was imagined as a body, and the ruler as the head directing the limbs. Without the head, the body loses direction. When Rama says Tirana lives “with its head cut off”, Veliaj is metaphorically transformed into the head of the city and the municipality into the body that cannot function without him.

In a modern democracy, the mayor is not the biological head without which the institution dies. The municipality has an administration, deputy mayors, a municipal council and competences that must continue to function beyond the personal fate of its leader. If such a large institution remains “headless” as soon as the mayor cannot enter his office, then the problem is not only the security measure. It is the governing model.

Whoever wants to understand the situation and take an active part in improving it clearly sees the huge gap between government propaganda and reality. When the law says no one is above the state, the prime minister defends the idea that the popular vote turns the individual into an untouchable being, regardless of the criminal bill he carries.

The question arises naturally: why does the prime minister choose to act as the political lawyer of a person steeped in corruption accusations? The answer is linked to the very nature of the system he has built. Corruption in this administration no longer appears as an isolated case or a “rotten apple” that happened to fall from the tree, but as a widespread, capillary and endemic phenomenon. When power functions as a single organism, the fall of one of its main “heads” risks shaking the entire structure.

From the incinerators to road tenders, from municipal affairs to ministerial posts, criminal cases and corruption accusations are so strongly intertwined with people close to the majority that a clean political distancing becomes ever more difficult. From this perspective, the indirect attack on the High Court can also be read as a political message to the entire system: that power will continue to present criminal proceedings against its people as “calvaries” or “experiments” whenever justice touches the majority’s inner circle.

Even the prime minister’s formula that he “respects justice, but does not accept the methods” carries an obvious contradiction. On one hand, Rama prides himself on the Justice Reform and presents it as one of the main achievements of his government; on the other, when the institutions of this justice touch powerful people close to power, the language changes and the proceedings are described as “calvaries” or “unprecedented legal experiments”.

The prime minister’s statement after the High Court’s decision will remain in history as the official document of the moral amnesty this power grants to corruption. It proves that for this political elite, power and offices are private property that cannot be touched by the simple law that applies to the ordinary mortals of this country.

Tirana is not headless because Erion Veliaj is in the cell where the law placed him. Albania and Tirana suffer because for years they were governed by people who replaced morality with sophisms, and turned the law into an elastic band that stretches only to protect the circle of the untouchables.

Exposing this hypocrisy is no longer simply a matter of political analysis, but a national emergency for anyone who believes this country deserves to be governed with dignity and not with cell scenarios and deceptive propaganda.

An architect by profession, Vangjel Petro Stamo was a Democratic Party MP in the first pluralist legislature, from 15 April 1991 to 4 February 1992, elected in the Durrës district.