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MP Dashnor Sula has commented on the DP's lobbying contract in the US through a post on his official Facebook profile.
He stated that history repeats itself, as former Mayor Lulzim Basha was placed in the spotlight a few months ago and faced accusations of the source of suspicious money to lobby in the US.
Sula's full post:
The lobbying lights of the Democratic Party in the USA.
When you don't learn from mistakes, they are repeated on an even larger scale. The Democratic Party, the main opposition force, is currently facing major mistakes because it has not learned from the past.
For several months, he has been in the spotlight and facing accusations of receiving suspicious funds to lobby in the US. That stigma has not been removed from former mayor Lulzim Basha even today.
But history repeats itself. Just 2 weeks before the parliamentary elections, another DP lobbying contract in the US is announced, worth up to 6 million euros. The Democratic Party Press Office, in its response, says that the DP is simply the beneficiary of the gift.
In fact, the truth is that the CLIENT who ordered the lobbying contract is the Democratic Party itself. For the payment of this contract, which for the first three months goes up to 750 thousand dollars, an Association has been established, and that the guarantor is an Albanian-American with the surname SECI. In short, like in the loans we take out at banks, Seci is the person who acts as a guarantor who will pay the money if the Democratic Party does not pay.
This is also the point that requires transparency, and the moment this transparency is lacking, doubts arise and we end up the same as with the doubts about Russian money with Lulzim Basha.
Article 23/1 of the Law on Political Parties and Article 92/2 of the Electoral Code clearly stipulate that “1. Each political party must register in a special register, according to the format approved by the Central Election Commission, the amount of funds received from each natural or legal person, as well as data related to the clear identification of the donor. In any case, the donor, at the time of donation, must sign a donation declaration, according to the format approved by the Central Election Commission. The list of persons who donate amounts of not less than 100 thousand lek, as well as the respective values, must always be made public”, states point 1 of Article 21 of the Law on Political Parties.
So, the Democratic Party should have made it transparent about who the people are who donated money to the Democratic Party for the relevant item of the lobbying contract. This would make it possible to identify the funding sources and in this way the DP would not be harmed on the eve of the elections but would be proud.
Also, Article 92/2 of the Electoral Code stipulates that for donations over 50 thousand lek, the money must be declared and transferred to a Special Account. “Donations of non-public funds with a value greater than 50 thousand lek must be made only in special accounts opened in banks by the electoral subject. The accounts are declared at the time of registration according to Article 64 of this law,” the Electoral Code states.
From the preliminary verifications carried out so far, none of these points have been respected. So we are dealing with a case that lacks transparency.
If we leave aside the legal aspect and address the political one, is it worth it in a country like Albania, with a population that we, the opposition, have denounced as having the highest poverty level in the region, to spend 6 million dollars on the image of an individual?
Would the Democrats benefit more if these $6 million in donations were used to campaign in Albania? Would it be better for the Democratic Party to spend those $6 million and get 10 more deputies in the Albanian Parliament?
Is the Democratic Party more interested in spending that money in Albania and coming to power or spending it on lobbying in the US, cleaning up the image of the mayor and having the Democrats remain in opposition for another 4 years? These are the questions that arise and make you reflect on what the real goals of the DP leadership are.
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