Perhaps this time a culprit will be found.
He may be called Mago Lakrori, or have any other name; what matters is that every appointee or elected official acting as a public functionary understands that he is nothing less than a public servant. Anyone who acts as if he has only rights has been elected or appointed to do much more—to be accountable.
This is precisely what the process of catharsis that began in the Socialist Party was expected to verify, not entirely by chance, after the high-profile action to dismiss customs officials and the covert corruption involved in bringing them back to work. This time it is a member of parliament, who could have issued a statement accepting responsibility or resigned, if he truly feels responsible for what he has done. That way, not all public servants would be left feeling that they alone are clean.
The idea of the axe falling on the “crooked trees” does not seem intended as an act of revenge, but rather as a warning or deterrent. If today there are government officials who mock Albania’s fate just to make money from shell companies; if there are public servants who break a contract that would greatly benefit their country simply because they cannot profit from it themselves; if there are customs officials who let trucks pass, draining the future of Albanians to line their own pockets—then action must be taken. And it all begins with the first “daredevil” caught selling his own country’s future for a handful of money.
It would be a fine reality if the cleanup process that began in the Socialist Party, however political it may be, produced a concrete result, identified someone responsible and showed that institutions know how to protect the state, despite the great lack of immunity—despite the great lack of immunity to corruption. If it is not a “demonstration of purity” staged for the local election campaign, catharsis in the Socialist Party will inspire much hope. Those who see corruption at work, in the state and in the streets, and flee somewhere from Albania, or copy the ready-made model, may perhaps no longer react this way, and morality will change, leading to the beginnings of building what is good.
One of Albania’s strategic allies
Adem Jashari’s brother is not granted Albanian citizenship
For several weeks, a request from the brother of Kosovo’s hero, Adem Jashari, asking to be granted Albanian citizenship has been sitting in the files of the Albanian Presidency, even though non-Albanians, such as Arabs, Italians, etc., have also obtained this citizenship.
Under Albanian law, only the President of the Republic has the authority to accept the request—that is, to grant or refuse it. Naturally, everyone should be equal before the law, but in the case at hand, the urgency of the Kosovo hero’s brother’s travel—the family of whom was wiped out by the Serbs during the Kosovo war—perhaps makes granting citizenship in urgent circumstances appropriate, since Rifat Jashari needs to go abroad for medical treatment. He has refused to travel on a Yugoslav passport. “Even if I know I may die if I don’t get treatment, I will not go to Germany with a Yugoslav passport. I want to have the passport of my motherland; otherwise, I will stay and wait in Kosovo,” the man who resisted the Serbs and whose family was massacred by Serbian soldiers told “KJ” last night.
The right thing to do would be for the Presidency’s administration to urgently submit such a request to the President for signature, although someone at the Presidency has tried to find a way to grant citizenship. This is a case that requires no verification. Rifat Jashari earned the citizenship of the state of Albania the moment he was born an Albanian, and also when he endured the spiritual suffering caused by the Serbs’ extermination of his entire clan. Now President Medani need only sign it as a formality and not delay granting citizenship.
