FLASH
Shkruar nga Mero Baze
Once we learn what the government is asking for, we must then make room for institutional debate between the Prosecutor's Office, the courts, the Ministry of Justice, and civil society.
The voices criticizing the proposals for the new Criminal Code have also increased on behalf of institutions. Today, the Prosecutor General Olsi Çela opposed it with many arguments, who actually emphasized a very important thing: that we have more problems with the practices of criminal procedure than with the Criminal Code itself. The President of the Supreme Court, Sokol Sadushi, also had a moderate critical sense. Several renowned jurists have also been involved in the debate, criticizing the predisposition for an even more repressive and abnormal Criminal Code than the one that already exists, and above all with great scope for misuse.
Now the question is: who are these "illegal" proponents of the Code, who are causing all this commotion?
The Criminal Code of Albania must of course be improved to include the new phenomena that society is facing and, above all, to make it a more consolidated, clearer, more impervious code to misuse and, of course, less repressive towards citizens.
What is being proposed is the opposite of this need. The point is, if we have a problem today of intimidation of the administration for carrying out its work, the new Code provides that an employee can be sentenced to up to 3 years just for having received a gift from someone and not declaring it. Neither the value of the gift nor its connection to any favor for the recipient is noted – only if it is discovered that he has received a gift. It could even be a bottle of whiskey and you can go to prison for 3 years without asking anyone for the gift. In a country where the culture of tipping comes from history and is the norm in society, the misuse of this article will intimidate anyone who works in the administration.
Another article that talks about illegal wealth is also abusive, even with a communist mindset, or an article about the high fees that you can charge for services, if they are above market references. Elsewhere I saw that the phrase “treason to the homeland” has also returned. So a series of proposals that contradict all human freedoms, and market movements or free movement.
If this debate is left without authors, it risks degrading and turning into a suffocating campaign for changes to the Criminal Code, which are actually necessary. But they should be prepared by the Albanian justice elite and not anonymous people who are now considered illegal after writing nonsense.
First of all, the government must come out with an official position and express its views: why we need a new Criminal Code, since the government is the one who assesses the challenges the state has with justice in this country, and give its positions on why the Criminal Code needs to be changed.
Once we learn what the government is asking for, we must then make room for institutional debate between the Prosecutor's Office, the courts, the Ministry of Justice, and civil society.
This current debate against an invisible enemy is a serious blow to the need for change. And in the meantime, the proposals, besides being ridiculous and dangerous at the same time, are harming the debate, which is still taking place without any official position from the government. Neither the government nor the justice institutions are taking them on board.
Of course, the goal is not to find out how many fools there are in the justice institutions, since we do not have this objective, but we definitely need to know the position of the government and the position of all justice institutions in the country, and only after that can they sit down to propose changes that make the Criminal Code more European and especially criminal procedures more related to the law and fundamental human rights. Until then, we are all imagining the thought-out image of Ulsi who seems to say: “these are deep matters, they are not for you”.
Lini një Përgjigje