Minister Poçi is losing control of the situation. After the murders of senior police officers, yesterday’s scandal at the Ministry of Public Order also breaks out, where his friend nearly turned the police department into a slaughterhouse Scandal yesterday at the Ministry of Public Order: the Elbasan police chief, together with his armed guards, rushes to shoot at the Republic’s Border Police director after the latter accuses Poçi’s Koseni of trafficking clandestine migrants page 3 Order must be established at the Ministry of Public Order

BY EDI LESI The spectacle that nearly ended in murder, which took place yesterday at the Ministry of Public Order, almost rendered irrelevant the building opposite, where dramas and comedies of this scale are staged: the National Theatre. For some time, this cultural institution had been strongly challenged by the state’s policies in general, but the shock it experienced yesterday from the colonels’ show in front of the Ministry of Public Order was unforeseeable. Many citizens present at that moment in this busy part of the capital, and dozens of police chiefs and directors who had just come out of the review meeting at the Ministry of Public Order, saw the true face of a police chief glorified to the point of becoming a myth, one of Minister Poçi’s closest associates, Edmond Koseni. When he came out through the ministry’s front door, he rushed toward his bodyguards, took a pistol from one of them, swung it in the air two or three times, then tucked it into his belt, all the while insulting and threatening a man whom he had also been waiting for and very much wanted to come out of the ministry quickly. As it emerged, the man Koseni wanted to bury seven fathoms under the ground was Colonel Pjerin Ndreu, currently Director of the Republic’s Border Police. The conflict had begun at the review meeting, where Colonel Ndreu had accused Koseni of not fighting the trafficking of clandestine migrants properly, saying that many Kurds were passing through Librazhd and Elbasan and then ending up in Vlora. In other words, through the territory where Koseni, Poçi’s friend, reigns. This accusation cannot help but also implicate the Minister of Public Order, who has given Koseni an extra mandate, making him a godlike figure whose every sin is forgiven, even serious criminal offences. (Continued on page 2)

Yesterday’s Opposition roundtable Photo: P. ILO Yesterday’s Opposition roundtable. Photo: P. ILO