The rapid deterioration of the political and economic situation and the inability to govern are seriously threatening the interests of the Nation and democracy. Over the past three years, the Democratic Party has failed to resolve a series of major issues for which the Albanian people rose up against the communist dictatorship. Under these circumstances, the undersigned parties and associations consider it essential to establish the Albanian Right-Wing League (LDSH), the only force that can repel the return of communism and Marxism, whether in an open or disguised form, and rescue the country from the crisis it is experiencing. The League’s activities will be carried out on the basis of a common program of principles, which takes precedence over party and short-term interests. Each party retains its traditional and programmatic identity, while rigorously respecting the principles adopted in this program. Neither party may enter into an alliance with any other political entity outside this League. The League’s national and international activities will be conducted solely by a representative body authorized by it. The Albanian Right-Wing League will be open to all political and social forces that accept its program in principle and confirm this through their practical activities. It is also open to individuals and members of parliament who wish to join it. The founding parties of the League agreed on the following program: 1. The LDSH proclaims as its sacred goal the unification of the Nation within its ethnic borders, in accordance with international instruments on peoples’ right to self-determination. 2. The LDSH supports the full development of pluralist democracy, the protection of individual rights and freedoms in all fields, and the inviolability of the free vote as the basis for changing the political forces that come to power. 3. The LDSH does not recognize the decisions of the Përmet Congress and proposes that the institutional form of the state be settled through a popular referendum. This is to be done solely on the basis of administrative reform, in order to eliminate and punish any corrupt practices. State and judicial institutions must be purged of Communist officials and Security personnel. Files must be opened under the supervision of a pluralist parliamentary commission, covering members of parliament, senior heads of state institutions, and political parties. 6. The Constitution and the complete legal framework must be made the foundations for building the state. Local government, the basis of democracy, must receive all the self-governing powers granted to it by law, putting an end to the current concentration of power of the communist type. The LDSH supports establishing strong public order to guarantee citizens’ lives, freedom of movement, and property through strict enforcement of the law. 7. One’s position on legitimate and inherited property is the dividing line between the Right and the Left. The LDSH considers private property sacred and will annul all confiscations carried out to the detriment of lawful property under the communist regime. The LDSH will review all sales by privatization boards conducted without auction and as individually sold objects. Problems arising from the restitution of property, under current conditions, are to be addressed through genuine democratic laws, reconciling the owner’s right with the general interest, without ever violating the firm principle that property must be returned to its heir and, where this is impossible, compensated for in kind or at its real value according to the free market. 8. The LDSH unequivocally supports the free market and individual initiative, and the rapid withdrawal of the state from economic activity. The LDSH supports rational reform that will pave the way for industrial production and rural development along the European path. The attraction of foreign investment, as a necessity for economic development, must be harmonized with comprehensive encouragement of Albanian entrepreneurs and an appropriate policy to protect national production. 9. The LDSH considers the Association of the Politically Persecuted to be a primary formation in the country’s political life. The negligent attitude toward the diaspora must come to an end, and genuine conditions must be created for it to contribute intellectually and economically to the progress of the Homeland. 11. The LDSH supports the organization of trade unions of the Western type. It supports the protection of pensioners, homeless children, and other social groups in need of economic assistance. Special care must be given to teachers, who work with dedication to prepare the Nation’s future. 12. The LDSH considers it an urgent duty to regulate and protect spontaneous emigration. The state is obliged to defend emigrants’ human rights wherever they may be, grant them status in accordance with international laws, and resolve their family problems. The national identity is suffering irreparable damage from the current state of this emigration. 13. The LDSH considers the preservation and cultivation of patriotism and our noble traditions—such as besa, friendship, and solidarity—a high duty. These are fundamental elements of national continuity, which is now growing dim. The LDSH will defend the Albanian family as the basic hearth of the Nation and society, and will commit itself without reservation to combating the ills brought by the transition, such as organized and spontaneous crime, drugs, prostitution, etc. 14. The LDSH will give its full support to the development of a national platform that will serve as the backbone of foreign policy and international relations. Given the dangerous situation in the region, Albania must turn toward natural alliances that lead it to European integration as a single nation, a force for balance and peace in the Balkans. THE ALBANIAN RIGHT-WING LEAGUE, as a clearly anti-communist force for democratic progress, seeks the support of the electorate. In these difficult times, no one—especially intellectuals—has the right to stand aside and leave the affairs of the country in other people’s hands, particularly when those hands are suspect. The Right in Albania will assume its rightful burden, as it does in every democratic country, and will open pluralist, for the protection of the rights and freedoms of the individual in all areas for the formation of political forces that come to power. 3. LDSH does not recognize the decisions of the Congress of Përmet, nor the form for choosing the institutional form of the state through a popular referendum. The constitution will be drafted solely on the basis of the referendum’s result. 4. LDSH supports national reconciliation and the ending of hostilities that arose during World War II. The first step on this path is the trial of communist crimes committed during the war and up to the present day, under the laws of the democratic state. 5. LDSH will resolutely fight corruption and bureaucracy, which have blocked economic development and are leading the country toward catastrophe. We will establish the legal framework and draft the bylaws and statutes for legal personnel, law-enforcement personnel, and the industrial apparatus and rural development on the European path. Attracting protective policy for national production. 9. a primary formation in the country’s political life. The persecuted are heirs to the traditionally right-wing, nationwide anti-communist struggle, a tradition sealed by the martyrdom and unparalleled suffering of one third of the people. LDSH grants former kulaks the same attributes. Without the active participation of former persecuted people in Albanian political life, there can be no true democracy. 10. LDSH considers the Diaspora an integral part of the nation, recognizing all the rights of an Albanian citizen, including electoral rights and rights to inherited property. protective policy for national production. The right wing in Albania will take on its rightful share of the genuinely open the difficult paths to progress. REPUBLICAN PARTY ASSOCIATION OF FORMER POLITICAL PERSECUTEES ASSOCIATION OF FORMER POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC PERSECUTEES

Quite a few people did not take the “Kallafatos case” seriously. Kallafatos was secondary; at the forefront were Brozi and Albanian Justice, which was in danger. Yesterday the Court of Cassation—that is, Zef Brozi—released five Greek spies, because of whom Albania endured unprecedented pressure during their trial last year. The votes of deputies indebted to Greece and of those sworn to social-ist solidarity, not to mention some naïve person who dreamed that he was defending the “independence of the judiciary,” made it possible for Greece to achieve what it had failed to accomplish through “Berisha’s dictatorial regime”: extending its influence into our highest level of Justice. In the Kallafatos smuggling case, the dignity of an entire parliament was broken. It was not an independent judiciary confronting antidemocracy. What confronted each other there were the parliamentarians’ dignity and their fear of losing their chairs. How could the fragile dignity of a nation stand up to five fanatics of Hellenism? Especially when it was in Brozi’s hands. Our “depoliticized” court issued an extremely political ruling. For the sake of a few chairs, in “defense” of high interests, it violated Justice and released him “on condition” for a crime for which no country in the world grants conditional release. Brozi? He suffers from the Greek syndrome.

Coming soon A party’s program, in addition to setting out its ideological lines, expresses its opposition and concrete alternative at particular political and economic moments. Since post-communist developments in Albania have been rapid, the Republican Party, while preserving its ideological foundations, has sought to keep up with these developments by improving its program in line with socioeconomic problems and the psychological factors shaping the situation. The principled decisions of the PRSH’s Second Congress and current political changes make it necessary to revise the program and statute. The PRSH Steering Committee has set up a working group for this purpose. The new program is expected to set out, within a concrete platform, major issues such as the national question, human rights, property, and socioeconomic problems. In its program, the Republican Party will insist that the national question be resolved on the basis of a current and forward-looking study, in order to avoid the adventurist political actions that are often harming the national cause. Its position on property will conform to international norms, according to the designated use of the property, and to the full principle that “Property is sacred.” Former owners enjoy rights to property in both cities and the countryside, but purchased property should also be recognized as belonging to Albanians in the diaspora, the royal family, religious communities, etc. Regarding socioeconomic problems, the new program will present the Republican Party’s alternatives for resolving the current problems of the politically persecuted, women, youth, and the fight against corruption, organized crime, etc. The working group is also working on improving the statute. It is thought that the statute will be unified with the program. In an effort to modernize the Party, the new statute will create more room for the grassroots organizational structures to act independently. Election procedures, from section chairpersons to national leaders, will be more democratic. The increase in the grassroots’ electoral and organizational powers will be accompanied by centralized strengthening of discipline in the Party, including powers to dismiss and appoint. To ensure that the new program-statute remains in force for as long as possible, the working group will also endeavor to draft it with a long-term perspective. ALEKSANDER GARULI Member of the PRSH Steering Committee

Article 22 of the Law on the Restitution of Property and Compensation of Former Owners states: “The former king and foreigners are excluded from this law.” If we are to believe the claims that “we are building a state governed by the rule of law” and that “we protect and respect individual rights and freedoms,” then the above article, which deprives the former king of the Albanians—or, more precisely, Ahmet Zogu and his heirs—of the right to property, seems contradictory or at least inexplicable. Judging simply from the way the above article is worded, it seems as if Zogu is deprived of his properties because perhaps someone might question whether he was Albanian, something no one believes. Setting that supposition aside, it is not at all clear how one could conclude that Article 22 is proper or that it is at least inspired by the decisions of the Përmet Congress. Before becoming king, King Zog was an ordinary citizen, like everyone else. By refusing to return properties lawfully acquired and owned, Ahmet Zog is being deprived of his right to inherited property, and not only on legal grounds. For this reason, I believe, as I said, that the article is anti-democratic, anti... [illegible/cut-off text] The fact that Article 22 refers to the former king and not Ahmet Zog gives the impression that his properties are those of an aristocratic family that owned property. Therefore, if someone wishes to deny the property rights that he had before becoming king, it is entirely unacceptable that the Albanian Ahmet Zogu be deprived of the right to inherited property acquired on a legal basis. article is anti-democratic, anti… [continues, cut off] Referring to Zog gives the impression that his properties were the fruit of illegal acts and therefore should not be returned or compensated for. But even if we accept this as fact (which must be documented), he, like Zogu, came from to deny him the property rights he had before becoming king, that is entirely unacceptable.

On Friday, 10.02.1995, at 11:00, in the Palace of Congresses (press conference hall), the leaders of the participating entities of the Albanian Right-Wing League (LDSH) will hold a press conference. ALBANIAN RIGHT-WING LEAGUE National Front Party Democratic Union Party Legality Movement Party Albanian Republican Party Association of Former Political Prisoners Association of Former Political and Economic Prisoners

Yesterday in Prishtina, at the premises of the Kosovo Writers’ Association, the book “Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit” by Al Gor, Vice President of the United States, was presented in its Albanian-language edition. Speaking at the presentation, President Rugova said he was honored to have the opportunity to say a few words about the book by the US Vice President and scholar Al Gor, “Earth in the Balance,” all the more so because for many years, as a senator and now as vice president, he has supported and continues to support the Kosovo cause and the Albanian cause, and Mr. Gor is a knowledgeable friend of Kosovo. ATSH

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“Hard times have come. No one understands anyone else anymore. It happens that someone is taken to be a partisan in the morning, and by evening becomes a deserter. From a right-wing extremist, he becomes a left-wing extremist. From a nationalist, a cosmopolitan. These minority members were released by Brozi on condition, but it is still not known what the condition is. But, as analysts say and observers point out, the four released musk(u)teers will make a notable contribution to improving bilateral Albania-Greece relations. Some even think that those who were four should become martyrs. After the martyr is proclaimed, the infidel should also be proclaimed. The Greeks have protested because the court hearing was not held in Greek. This is absurd with both feet of the Code of Criminal Procedure. An important article has been forgotten in the new penal code: “No Greek who violates the laws of the Albanian state should be punished.” of Labor, time of socialism. If it manages to win the vote of confidence, it is certain that it will Party of Labor. “You ask for my judgment on everything that is happening, but I cannot judge these things because I have made public statements. so real that my cracked we need them for? Better without them, since they kill our soldiers, a court case is opened, and our soldiers are sentenced… compliant town crier. Because, as you say, they will comply—and [unclear text]” THE CHRONICLER

• Former Minister of Trade Pajtim Azaj is to appear in court over a lawsuit filed against him concerning his earlier activities. Citizen Adrian Ahmed Al Arnau’t has filed a complaint with the State Audit Office, claiming that some of the money with which the Burrel Hotel was privatized by the former minister belonged to him. The Syrian citizen of Albanian descent says that the amount taken in this way by the former minister is around 35 million old lekë. This case was referred to court at the end of 1993, but only ... • Citizen H. Zh. claims a share of the Sodimi “Qemal Stafa” complex and has therefore filed a lawsuit with the court. The disputed area is currently being used by the “Dinamo” Sports Club. At the first-instance court, the capital’s court ruled in favor of the current user, “Dinamo,” so it remains for the higher courts to respond to the appeal filed by citizen H. Zh. • A student is caught after taking a police officer’s motorcycle. The student was under investigation… [end of line cut off] In the end, the Greeks do not break the laws of Greece. The Socialist Party, which until recently was called the Party of Labour, has expressed a desire to return once again to the era of socialism. If it manages to win a vote of confidence, it is certain to accomplish this easily, since it has the cadres of the Party of Labour. “You ask me about everything that is happening and want my judgment, but I cannot judge these things because I have already commented publicly. I can no longer make predictions either. Albanian reality is so real that my shattered mind is unable to offer forecasts. I am in favor of removing the borders between Albania and Greece. What do we need them for? Better without them, since our soldiers get killed, a court case is opened, and our soldiers are convicted… Next time I’ll take a town crier with me. A compliant town crier. Because, as you say, they will obey, and a town crier who doesn’t sell what his master owns? [uncertain reading]” The Chronicler