Veliaj surrounded by silence after a dignified proposal on the Territorial Reform

By Ilir Yzeiri

Although in the most difficult conditions that can be faced by an elected official who carries on his shoulders the running of the municipality with population and economic and cultural activity equal to half of Albania, Erion Veliaj, unable to take part in the public and institutional consultations on the Territorial Reform because of political persecution, addressed a letter to the Assembly and made several proposals, essentially useful and aligned with the Constitution.

He helped bring the wooden communication with the public that SP exponents were conducting about this reform into a new light, and gave several opinions that do honour to the Socialist Party and remove the fog in which this reform is wrapped, a reform that has left a large part of citizens and SP members alike dissatisfied.

Even though in those conditions, Veliaj, through the recommendations he proposes, asks that the Socialist Party present itself stronger and more dignified and avoid unnecessary rifts that come from drafting a bill that contains no elements of good governance, but rather resembles a rush to draft a reform for unclear interests.

Let us look in turn at Veliaj’s arguments and submissions.

First, Veliaj does not come out against the reform. He asks that the majority make it constitutional.

Veliaj, despite the speculations that are natural if one looks at his political fate, the macabre isolation and the violation of human rights, despite the decision taken by the Constitutional Court, which left him in office — despite all this — with this letter addressed to the Assembly has preserved his high political identity as a dignified representative of the majority, whose political culture is distinguished by open debate and differing opinion.

Veliaj says expressly that the majority to which he belongs “must not fear this standard” and that reforms must withstand even the constitutional review of future majorities.

Second, although from a position where the normal exercise of his mandate has been made impossible for him, he chooses to speak as an institution and not as an innocent political detainee.

The letter, as we have seen, raises a question: how can the Mayor be asked for an institutional opinion on the reform, while his participation in the process itself has been made impossible?

We all know the criminal state paradox that accompanies Veliaj’s fate. The Constitutional Court, the country’s highest constitutional body, tells him: “Go to work”; the Supreme Court of Sandër Simoni, since he needed the votes to be elected to the KLGJ — that is, to satisfy the justice corporation that takes its decisions by favour — tells him: “Stay in prison”.

Third, Veliaj comes from the political school of the modern SP, where critical thinking, structured also legally, does the reform good, and his suggestions, if read carefully, are the most dignified and most institutional critical thoughts and reasonings that have been made about this reform.

Veliaj’s document provides material for this thesis: it confronts, article by article, the Constitution, Law No. 139/2015 and the European Charter; it identifies concrete problems and ends with nine corrective requests.

Fourth, the legal finding can be explained in one sentence: the current law says Municipality → Administrative Unit → City/Village; the project says Municipality → City → Administrative Unit/Village.

So the reform does not only change the map; it intervenes in the architecture of self-government without simultaneously changing the basic law that regulates it.

Fifth, the strongest constitutional thesis is: “The citizen must come before the map.”

Article 108 requires the prior opinion of the population. Veliaj argues that here the project, the tables and the map were drafted first and the citizens are asked afterwards. So the question is whether an alternative is truly being consulted, or whether legitimisation is being sought for an already formulated solution.

There is also a political dimension: does the SP still have room for disagreement from within? Veliaj does not place himself outside the party and does not attack its leaders. On the contrary, in essence he says: I am part of this majority and precisely therefore I ask that our reform withstand the Constitution. This may open an analysis of the need for internal pluralism in a party that has governed for many years.

The human contrast is strong. He writes that responsibility towards citizens does not become smaller when the exercise of the mandate becomes more difficult. So the angle should be: even though physically prevented from exercising his duty normally, he maintains that the mandate continues to oblige him to speak for the city that elected him.

Tirana is the concrete test of the reform, not an abstract debate. Rinas joins Tirana, but the letter asks to know: how much population is transferred, what assets and liabilities, what personnel, revenues, expenditures and services? So does this file exist, and what does it say?

The project proclaims “proportional representation of the cities”, but does not yet explain how it will translate into votes. Veliaj asks: what happens to the equality of the vote and to the representation of villages and administrative units?

The importance of Veliaj’s letter lies not only in the fact that he says “not yet” to a project of his own majority. What matters in this case is that, despite the conditions he is in, Veliaj feels free and, from where he is, tries to articulate a different model of relationship with the party: loyalty to the Socialists, but without institutional silence.

Erion Veliaj is an asset of the Socialists and a voice that the SP needs to preserve, in the desert of thought that has gripped it.