Expert Çeku challenges the socialists’ fiscal package ON PAGE 5

Profit taxes are having an effect on the market ON PAGE 5

Majko’s show in hospitals; doctors react: ON PAGE 5

The prime minister’s request for Klosi’s removal once again reveals clan divisions in the left’s government The President has twice rejected Majko’s request to remove Fatos Klosi as head of SHIK, ignoring the motives driving the prime minister to take such an initiative ON PAGE 3

Prime Minister Pandeli Majko has continued in recent days to hold preliminary sessions in an effort to change the image of his party and government. The Prime Minister, Pandeli Majko, has continued in recent days to hold preliminary sessions in an effort to change the image of his party and government. After several months at the head of the country, the prime minister is no longer able to blame his predecessor, or the ministers he himself chose to govern, for the crises in the country. From his first days as prime minister, unlike Nano, he managed to establish a dialogue with the opposition, while also undertaking other fundamental changes in all the state structures that depended on him. Yesterday’s meeting between government and opposition also formalized an agreement to bring the country back to normality. One of its main points was finding the killers of Azem Hajdari. To date, Prime Minister Pandeli Majko has done nothing in this regard, delaying without any reason the submission to Parliament of the Hajdari law, which calls for the establishment of an independent investigative group. Likewise, during the months he has been at the head of the government, the fight against corruption and smuggling has seen no positive developments. Illegal trafficking, from the trafficking of migrants to drug trafficking, is increasing in scale, while the state offices still house the people who encourage, conceal and protect such trafficking. Pandeli Majko works with people whom Albania has identified and denounced as kingpins of the regional mafia, and who control the most serious trafficking operations, severely damaging the already tarnished image of the country as well as the stability and peace of our neighbours. Majko has made no effort to clean up the administration of the gunmen, and appears to have no intention of removing from his government members who openly act against Albania’s strategic interests, steal through tenders, and seek to turn the major privatization campaign into an industry for installing anti-Albanian interests and the primitive nationalist lobbies of the Balkans in the Albanian economy. Majko has still not removed from his government’s programme what he called, in the early days of his rule, the suppression of the coup d’état; this has further inspired the group of political prosecutors to persecute the opposition and its activists. The result of such an approach is also the scandal of the wiretapping of the leader of the Albanian opposition, the continuation of political arrests, and the imprisonment of dozens of opposition activists. With all these negative burdens in his governance, it is difficult for him to emerge unscathed, as he claims. If he is determined to lead the country out of the crisis, he must put an end to the elements of the crisis that originate in the government or are an integral part of it. So far, the opposition has done everything possible to support those government officials or particular sections of the ruling camp who care about the country’s fate, not the mafia’s. On many occasions, political conflict has been set aside—a conflict that would otherwise block a government whose achievements are almost entirely limited to unfulfilled mandates and the speedboats and declarations concerning migrants. Moreover, the opposition offered a historic pact to restore order in the country and fight gangs and corruption, and to restructure the police—a pact that would ensure a stronger fight against crime and save the country from this scourge, which threatens its future. But the opposition’s willingness to achieve this normality has been very strong, while the government and Majko alongside it have shown no sign of flexibility. Such an attitude prolongs the crisis, destroys the country, drives people out of Albania and blocks its democratic decision-making. Majko’s responsibilities are great and abundantly clear. The burden of his government has been more than enough to achieve all these results, rather than to keep the enemies of gangs and the mafia close to the seat of power.

Albanian politicians and Council of Europe reporters discuss consolidating political dialogue Pollo: A series of arrests carried out—

U.S. President Bill Clinton announces a military presence “Our final decision will be made as soon as the parties have reached a peaceful agreement,” Clinton said yesterday ON PAGE 6

The need is felt for a key point to secure the agreement By Mero BAZE / RAMBOUILLET ON PAGE 3

Five judges and one prosecutor are dismissed from their posts, solely because they had attended Azem Hajdari’s funeral

Pollo: A series of arrests carried out by the prosecution against opposition politicians on absurd and unequivocally political charges represents Albania’s departure from the democratic principles that guide today’s Europe ON PAGE 3

Five judges and one prosecutor are dismissed from their posts, solely because they had attended Azem Hajdari’s funeral The President is just like the political prosecutors. Strong reactions from some KLD members who opposed the judges’ dismissal without evidence of guilt out political purges in the courts The President is just like the political prosecutors. Strong reactions from some KLD members who opposed the judges’ dismissal without evidence of guilt ON PAGE 4

The prosecutor and SHIK are in collusion against the opposition ON PAGE 2

ON PAGE 2

Today, 154 days since the murder of the December Leader Every day that passes since the murder of Azem Hajdari, the symbol of democracy and pluralism, proves the involvement of Fatos Nano’s government and his successor in the crime that shook the entire Albanian world. The government of the former communists, which is free and criminally untroubled to release all those who were not criminally investigated and who took the life of the December Leader, has shown Albanians that it has been and remains a familiar name, whose members have proper names but are untouched by those in power. Democrats and all Albanians who loved and honored Azem Hajdari cannot [face] criminal justice, or must publicly declare that it was itself that carried out Azem Hajdari’s murder.

The Agricultural University, a hotbed of dissent and a volcano of pro-democracy movements By Bislim AHMETAJ ON PAGE 7

Lessons from history By Uran BUTKA ON PAGE 8

As a moral obligation to those who elect me as a member of parliament By Fadil ÇEPELE ON PAGE 7

Who was Ahmet Zogu’s assassin ON PAGE 9

The government takes revenge on students in Korçë ON PAGE 3

A schoolgirl alerts the police ON PAGE 4

The Enforcement Office ignored by the executive Most court rulings, especially those concerning property and unlawful occupation of jobs, are not enforced simply because the authority of the state and the force of the law have been lost... ON PAGE 4