Voa: Xhaçka's mandate, Constitutionalist: Parliament forced to bring it to us

2024-07-10 20:51:00, Aktualitet CNA

Voa: Xhaçka's mandate, Constitutionalist: Parliament forced to bring

Holta Zacaj

In Albania, the Constitutional Court annulled today the decision of the parliament which refused to send to this court the motion of the opposition for the incompatibility of the mandate of the deputy Olta Xhaçka. In April, the socialists interpreted their vote with the fact that despite the fact that the decisions of the Constitutional Court are mandatory for implementation, the deputies, according to the constitution, are free in their decision-making.

Precisely for this issue, the parliament requested a few days ago, from the Constitutional Court, to turn to the Venice Commission to clarify, among other things, that "based on the principles of representative parliamentary democracy, can deputies be forced to vote in a certain way? If there are such exceptions, what are they and are they related to the case of motions for the compatibility of a deputy's mandate?". But the request to include the Venice commission was rejected by the Court.

As the president Holta Zaçaj explained today, the Constitutional Court has assessed that "MPs must vote in accordance with the order of the Court, as this vote is not an ordinary parliamentary procedure and as such has nothing to do with the principle of the non-binding mandate of the MP, but it is within the framework of the execution of the Court's decision". It remains to be seen how the Court will argue this point in its reasoned decision.

It is also unclear what will happen if the parliament, in this case the majority, sticks to her interpretation. The President of the Court repeated for her part, that "the decision is very clear. No one can decide not to execute the decision of the Constitutional Court. The force of its decisions is equal to the force of law. Not to implement the decision of the Constitutional Court, means not to implement the constitution and the law".

The issue of Ms. Xhaçka's mandate has been wandering between the parliament and the Constitutional Court for almost two years. Questions about the case of Mrs. Xhaçka arose after the company of her husband, Artan Gaçi, received the status of a strategic investor for a tourist hotel, which, according to the opposition, constitutes a conflict of interest. The case received attention again after a few months ago the Special Court seized over 10,000 square meters of surface on which the hotel is planned to be built. The land purchased by Mr. Gaçi, from private persons, turns out to have benefited from the latter, through the falsification of documents and that the surface was owned by the state. Earlier, the former mayor of Himara, Jorgo Goro, was arrested precisely because of the doubts about the ownership of this area./ VOA