Altin Dumani has won the battle, but the war is ahead!

2024-09-13 20:49:00, Opinione Lorenc Vangjeli

Altin Duman's SPAK has finally won the first serious public battle. The culture of impunity and the inviolability of high-profile political figures is now a beautiful tale of the past. Yesterday's beneficiaries of the fairy tale, today they are all in the nightmare of being in line.

With the granting of the defendant's status to Sali Berisha, the highest stake in the group of the most powerful of the transition, no one else is immune from the knock on the door and the subpoena to answer before justice. For new sins and those that have not yet been buried by prescription.

The battle against impunity, which even the most optimists and skeptics of the new justice system did not believe until yesterday, is today a reality and mainly bears the harsh portrait of Berisha as a symbol. And when Berisha remained in the gears of the system, the others are just fluff that can be easily waxed even in neighborhood clinics.

The all-powerful and arrogant former president, the immovable and irreplaceable idol of about half of Albanians for three short decades, already has his own bet to win. He is officially suspected of corruption.

Almost a year after being investigated, SPAK was finally able to sign an indictment for the highest profile Albanian politician. But this is just one battle. The final struggle of the SPAK – meaning by this acronym, the entire justice system – is the administration of justice. So the verification of the suspicions about the defendant beyond any possible dilemma. With an impeccable procedure. Open and transparent. Free and honest. And this depends both on the ability to defend the accusation in court, and on the obligation to convince the public, beyond any doubt, of the guilt of the defendant Berisha. The bet is open and the noise and emotions that accompany the whole process naturally do not allow it to take place in laboratory conditions, even more so when it comes to Sali Berisha.

No matter what the case, what kind of match the parties in the process, prosecutors and lawyers make, whatever the decision of the judge as arbiter, the public will be divided into three parts: the leftists will believe that hell must have a special circle and private only for Berisha, the right-wingers will consider him a hero and victim of Rama and the Americans who control the system and the Indifferents who will sometimes smile at the karma that does not forget, and sometimes they will be completely indifferent to this act.

The process for Mr. Beisha has two inseparable components, political and legal. The collision of the two, the tools that each of these components makes available to understand what is going on, create endless misunderstandings about the process and cast doubt on it as well.

Starting from the first component. Last winter, SPAK requested the blocking of Mr. Berisha's passport and his obligation to appear before the prosecution body. Berisha refused such a thing and put himself on a collision course with the system, probably convinced that SPAK would withdraw from this request. This did not happen and this created the unprecedented act, never thought of before, of locking the most powerful man of the transition under house arrest.

Although once the mere conjecture that such a thing could happen gave rise to the idea that the world would be overturned, his confinement at home neither overturned the world, nor burned Albania, nor changed the order of the seasons that followed each other for more than 250 days, until the day he was officially charged. The only victim of this nonsense was Berisha himself, who stuck at home, like those who used to shave blood feuds, makes his battle sometimes epic for one side and sometimes funny for the other side.

On the other hand, fixed on this day, it is worth seeing the legal component. Would it have been better for Berisha to have spent all this time, from being taken as a person under investigation until he became a defendant, in freedom? That there had been no measure for him from the beginning of time? So that this whole chain reaction and this political tension in the country would not be created? So that an irreversible damage was not created in the failure to fulfill his duty as a member of parliament and leader of the opposition? And above all, could his freedom emancipate the still dramatic approach that the general public has to the relationship between individual freedoms and rights and respecting the principle of the presumption of innocence?

Because if Berisha were to be investigated at liberty, it would discourage the whole army of prosecutors and judges who easily sign a prison sentence for two hashish cigarettes and sneezing in public places, simultaneously creating, in the worst case, a vulnerable group of citizens who pay for them or at best, an incredible chain of personal, family and social dramas for the same group of people and much more.

Could it have happened otherwise? Since on Wednesday at noon, together with the announcement of the charge, SPAK prosecutors also made the request for the security measure for Berisha? Logic, but especially the criminal procedure code, says yes.

Sali Berisha no longer had the possibility to escape, nor to damage the evidence, nor to commit a crime as serious as the one suspected, nor could he intimidate the witnesses. This is the only moment where the next step of this process can be attacked: the procedure. The rest is simply a battle won by SPAK against impunity, but one less chance to win the final fight to deliver justice.

There is another detail that deepens and blurs more than it clarifies the public truth and the public's perception of the process. Many know, but few say that in Berisha's bet with justice, SPAK on one side and Berisha on the other, are two equal parties in the process. The judge is the arbiter who decides on them. But for understandable reasons, the opinion is attacked only by one of the parties.

His tireless legal advocate testifies his truth several times a day and screen by screen, as do other political and media supporters of the former prime minister. The other side, the prosecutors, as it happens, remain silent. They have spoken with their actions in the investigative file and will only speak in court. This imbalance in the public, this scale with one arm, often creates a wrong perception, which added here and with the house arrest of Berisha that puts him in the position of the victim, casts doubt on what is happening.

In fact, everything is simpler than the passions of all parties involved in this thrilling story read. The investigative file damned by one side and kept silent by the other, recalls a phrase from a few years ago: "...using power for his own benefits and to enrich his political allies and members of his family by misappropriating …!” This is what secretary Blinken wrote in the mandate of sanctioning non grata of the former prime minister. This is the official accusation of SPAK.

The rest, the vicious attack on SPAK to defactor his charge, to dress him in a political costume, to intimidate him and make him untrustworthy, is the same series of films that the American Blinken also envisioned: “ ...his rhetoric shows that he is ready to protect himself, family members and allies at the expense of independent investigations...!". When Berisha says that SPAK is a structured criminal organization, he is not saying anything new. He is following in his old tradition.

Wednesday, which did not shock Albania, also witnessed an extraordinary detail and a common problem that the two unequal political halves in the country, the left and the right, have solved in different ways. Both are unhappy with the new reality and with the appearance on the stage of a power, once traditionally hidden under the armpit of political power.

Both are under grudge and full of bitterness for SPAK. Just like the precedent of former president Berisha who is answering for his signatures at the head of the government meeting, three or four of Rama's deputy prime ministers who have signed collective decisions are trembling, since Rama himself, as a rule, has rarely signed.

But in contrast to each other, in these two unequal halves, left-handers applaud and almost servilely kiss the hand they cannot bite, right-handers seek to bite the hand that is circling your back. Out of necessity and not out of necessity, even with this detail under the arm, politics will run towards the elections next spring, counting the battles that SPAK will win - the punishment of the unpunished - while the public will wait for justice. Because justice is the fight the justice system must win on their behalf.