The day’s note At Thursday’s parliamentary session, it was shown that the Meksi government and its band of accomplices called Parliament have started engaging in usury politics. In the name of transparency, they bring about complete obscurity. In the name of accountability, they wash their hands like butchers. In the name of citizens’ interests, they help guarantee only their own interests. By means of a special law, Parliament approved the establishment of an [inter]parliamentary commission to oversee the activities of the borrowing firms. A commission up in the air, whose head and tail are unknown. What is it going to do?! Ensure transparency? For whom, when the law prohibits the publication of data? Ensure accountability? By whom, when it establishes no kind of legal relationship between the commission and the entities whose activities it will oversee? Ensure protection of the interests of citizens and the firms? In what way, when Parliament and the government too are shirking this essential obligation? But why was all this done?! Despite their great care to conceal the deception, the two cleverest members of the government’s PDS staff, Blen Cela and Bahri Kocliku, have discovered where the trouble lies. It is in the government’s hands. And the government, in order to deceive the IMF, deceive the Albanian firms twice as much, and deceive the citizens and villagers even more—the people who have sold their cows and houses and put the money into the firms—has just set up a so-called non-parliamentary commission. Perhaps the government wanted Parliament—and all of Parliament—but its speaker, accustomed to petty tricks since his prison days and made more sophisticated by parliamentary life, has dumped this responsibility on Parliament’s economic commission. But the chairman of this very commission, Mr. Kopliku, has opposed this. He opposed it because he is not as naive as the new MPs, who know only how to raise their voting cards. He opposed it, and the question of Hajdin Sejda’s extradition still burns. He opposed it because he knows a thing or two about the government’s affairs. Perhaps, for example, he knows how much government officials or former officials have made in this business so far?! Or perhaps he knows where the government gets its money when payday comes and the coffers are empty?! But the Meksi government aims to have its cake and eat it too. It has manoeuvred in such a way that tomorrow, whatever happens, it can shout: “We bear no responsibility! The commission! We gave you a commission; let it find your money.” Thus the firms left in the lurch and thousands of citizens find themselves betrayed by the irresponsible manoeuvring of the government and Parliament. This is a filthy game played by the government and Parliament with the most acute economic and social problem threatening thousands of Albanians. The government and Parliament, having taken and stolen Albanians’ votes, treat them like the most shameless common criminals, hiding from their creditors—even down a mousehole.

The United States continues to work closely with Albanians to move forward together on the path to establishing democratic institutions. Interview with Timothy Wirth, Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, given to the BBC. “The United States government has expressed great concern about the parliamentary elections in May; nevertheless, we hope that their outcome will turn in the other direction, moving toward democracy and not away from it.” Read on page 3

In place of remembrance for President Berisha: Grief and tears of mourning still hold all of Fushë-Krujë and the surrounding area frozen. The macabre crime has killed everyone. The absence of little nine-year-old Besmir, snatched by a criminal hand almost a month ago and brutally massacred in the most inhumane way in recent days, has been felt not only by the family of Petrit Tufa and his relatives, but by every mother, every household. Look at the photograph of the little boy snatched away by criminals; look at his innocent eyes, fixed on us all these days, but now forever closed by the murderous hand. They accuse. They accuse and appeal to parents: protect your children, so they do not suffer the fate of the late Besmir. He is no longer alive today. Although the police had been informed of the meeting place where the criminals would collect 20

Shkodër - Lezhë Page 6

We note: “ mediocre films, which are no longer worth mentioning.” This is what Teodor Laço, Minister of Culture, Youth and Women, alias the hybrid Laço-Minister, said last night while being interviewed by Albanian television about the European film festival, which has been scheduled to take place in Tirana in the autumn of next year. What a disgrace!... How can a culture minister speak in this way? With what audacity does a man like Laço-Minister brazenly insult entire generations of artists who created Albanian cinematographic art? Page 9

Amnesty International’s appeal to the Albanian President: Page 4

The Steering Committee of the PS in Gramsh: Page 2

Following the law on the commission for investigating usury schemes Vehbi Alimuça, Pres of VEFA Holding Company: Page 7 Portrait of Vehbi Alimuça.