The minister promotes the officer convicted of abuse of office: After Pobrat’s accusations about ties within the Socialist parliamentary group MP Spartak Braho says: If Poçi doesn’t change the Ministry of Public Order, Meta should fix it

MENTOR KIKIA In Tirana, a few elderly dervishes brush aside the benches and wait for the arrival, for five days in a row, to see who among them will be the next in line for new pensions. Mami Plase [?] on the neck sleeps for the widowed pensioners. They will not receive a pension in June 1990. On the other hand, at the end of the dictator’s absurd regime, a pension was chosen that was as ridiculous as it was low. In Albania, the greatest benefit has gone to those who were collective farm members, among many rural people and the benefits of government schemes. In the Highlands, in villages where they are still called koçia, with the sheep and the houses with guards. And in the end, ridiculous pensions with which today their family economy does not even meet the standard cost of bread. Many are ill with heart disease, asthma, diabetes, and rheumatism, but the state has no intention of helping them with reimbursement, or even with cheap medicine. They are the ones who worked their whole lives under a surname, serving for years even death. They have only a few coins in their pockets, while the government replies to them with coin-sized balances. The elderly are today the most vulnerable group. Pensions are delayed today; they have lost faith in the state and hope in tomorrow. Some of them spent years waiting for the injustice to be corrected.

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Yesterday, the appointment of the officer convicted of abuse of office has made the name of the deputy director of Tirana prison in Ernest scandalous. Mr. Pobrat has appointed a writer as secretary of the structured body, having come under pressure from the public and the press. I am convinced that with the current Minister of Public Order its ordeal began, but this is only the beginning. This is a scandal that should lead to Mr. Poçi’s resignation and not to the suicide of the state. Mr. Pobrat himself knows it too. The interior minister these days is trying to justify acts that cannot be justified. In the Ministry of Interior there are voices that some orders were signed without the knowledge of some officials. This issue has become public and the opposition will not let it pass without accountability. page 7

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