The Democratic Party to Parliament: Say no. The People’s Assembly has said “no” to 13 parties regarding the electoral law. In the joint request of the electoral parties, the first article stated that Parliament should examine the draft election law by 20 January. But this week too the deputies will continue their democratic holidays. This was confirmed yesterday by the deputy speaker of Parliament, Shaqir Vukaj. Meanwhile, the press office, with the acting Koçi, is unable to provide any information. Speaker Arbnori himself came to work yesterday for the first time in ’96, from Russia, to continue the parliamentary routine. Apparently, his agenda for this week does not include a presidium meeting, which would decide the work program for January. January was the deadline that Arbnori himself had promised the other members of the Presidium, at its last meeting, to resolve the issue of the electoral law. But later events became complicated. While the opposition was demanding a legislative discussion of its proposal, the PD and the Government were preparing another draft. The head of the parliamentary group of the PD then told Republika that their draft law would be submitted to Parliament within January. But this is not being confirmed. From the Ministry of Justice, which has the final say on government draft laws, Braca states that even for another month this ministry does not expect such a draft from the Kosovars of local government, in whose office the next electoral draft law is being prepared. Meanwhile, the PD was the only party that did not sign the parties’ declaration. Shehu stated at the January 9 round table that he needed to ask the highest authorities about this. After three days, which was also the signing deadline, he did not place his signature below the declaration. “We do not agree with many of the points in that declaration,” explains the PB leader to justify the lack of signature. “We are still discussing, and by the end of the month we will give our opinion on the electoral law, in the form of the Government’s draft law.” So the waiting and the Parliament’s “No,” whose majority belongs precisely to Shehu’s party. Aurel Simoni

The former head of the Ersekë Internal Affairs branch is in handcuffs The border killings in 1989–91 now have a third accused, after the arrest of two soldiers in December 1995. The Kukës Court has arrested 50-year-old Kadri Ibaj from the city of Kukës, who in 1989–90 was head of the Internal Affairs branch in Ersekë. The lawsuits against the former head of Internal Affairs were filed in the town of Ersekë by 10 families who had lost their children at the border, and it was confirmed that the killings had taken place when Ibraj was holding the high post. After these complaints, the prosecution in Ersekë issued the order for his arrest, and on 14 January 1996 he was arrested. Along with Ibaj, who was arrested as part of the list, there are also 34 other persons, starting with former president Ramiz Alia; former interior minister Hekuran Isai; and 34 other officials in senior positions of the border service. Complaints have been filed against all the district officials, and the parliamentary committee on Defense and SHIK gave the green light to the Prosecutor’s Office to indict these former officials, who are responsible for carrying out Ramiz Alia’s order to kill around 40 young people along the border with Greece. Ma. Be.

The process of socialization of the Democratic Party ultimately shows its irreversible character. After a sustained, public molding of the naïve and the bookkeepers in the distribution of votes through statements about the social character of PD policy, the social state and the interests of the common people, the PD’s latest national council finally sealed its self-immolation. Even if we did not believe that such a political psychology is the remnant of a political past for its leaders, at best we would say that everything is being done to win the votes of the electorate. Perhaps pressured by false ideas that poor peoples naturally move toward the left, and by the fixed notion that this practice led to socialist victory in the Eastern countries, the PD is abandoning what it has long been striking with its policy, the right-wing spectrum of the Albanian political universe, while aiming at the uneducated. To fight socialists with their own weapons is more than a paradox. Not only because they know how to use these weapons effectively against opponents who do not obey them, but also because it has now become customary to call these ideas left-wing ideas and to believe them more when they come from that side. It is up to the PD to decide whether it wants to stay in the position of the center-right or to cross the boundary that separates this position from the center-left, sterilizing the PS and pushing it toward its extreme. But it is not within its competence to deny the existence of the Right by launching frontal attacks against it. Because if the electorate were to believe that, after the PD’s clear positioning on left-wing ground, the PD-PS struggle has no real character beyond the rhetoric of the parliamentary group, Parliament, the PD’s attacks on right-wing ideas are real efforts to eliminate it. Whether this people needs the conservative right-wing alternative to radical capitalism, which has found expression in PR’s program, or the left-wing alternative of the social market economy put on the political ideas market by the PS, the end will tell, and according to the PD this cannot be the subject of another article. What is politically noteworthy is that these two conditions are fixed, that the PD is adding to the contingent of left-wing forces growing to enter the campaign, moving even farther away from the voter base of its ’92 supporters, who no longer recognize it at 75% and even 50% in the percentages of journalistic tests. Shehu and not even at 50% in the percentages of journalistic tests. G. C.

P. 4

P. 5

Meisi