The police and personnel
BY ALFRED PEZA
A few hours after leaving the Prime Minister’s office last weekend, the Director of Personnel at the Albanian Ministry of the Interior resigned. It is still not known what was discussed behind Fatos Nano’s heavy doors, apart from the fact that, when he sat down at his desk, Nikollë Rica put his final signature on the official documents. This is an entirely civic act, but one that can never be passed over so lightly. This is because over the past six months he has put his signature to hundreds of documents concerning personnel policy in the delicate ministry. A policy on which, more than anything else, the successes and failures of this part of the left-wing government’s program have depended.
The police’s results to date are in no way attributable to one person alone, even if that person is the head of personnel. Ultimately, like all his counterparts, he dealt only with the bureaucratic side of the problem. It is hardly his fault that people who led operations against the opposition and citizens during their peaceful demonstrations from 28 May ’96 to 29 June ’97 were promoted to positions of responsibility in the Ministry of the Interior. Violators of laws and international human-rights conventions, and torturers of journalists, politicians and ordinary people, are specific individuals who continue to go about their work undisturbed. If the “Berisha regime” became “gangster-like,” these “specialists” in the police and SHIK helped bring that about more than anyone else.
Every ordinary Albanian citizen applying for a passport must obtain certificates from the prosecutor’s office and the court stating that they are not under criminal investigation. Yet Neritan Ceka and Ndre Legjisi say that the former Tropoja police commissioner was a wanted person only after he killed his subordinate in his office. Or why should a Shkodra-style rebellion have to happen before the ministry checks the records of former police employees? The explanation is very simple. Legal and “meritocratic” criteria are not followed in their appointments. Who will answer for this? After all this, citizens can hardly be blamed for believing that, “in order to conduct smuggling and exploit the people who helped them during the election campaign,” those in power appoint their own people to head the police.
The Secretary of State for Defence Policy, Perikli Teta, is the first politician in power who cannot be the sole spokesperson for the latest police appointments. Albanians do not want crime to continue making the front pages of newspapers and leading the TV and radio news. There is, of course, someone to blame for this. The Ministry of the Interior must appoint its officials solely on the basis of professional and moral criteria.