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VOA: SP does not obey and ignores the Constitutional Court for Xhaçka

2024-04-11 22:02:00, Aktualitet CNA

VOA: SP does not obey and ignores the Constitutional Court for Xhaçka

Deputy Olta Xhaçka

From VOA

In Albania, the left majority decided today not to obey a decision of the Constitutional Court, marking the first case of ignoring the most important institution of Justice in the country. There were 72 socialist MPs who voted against sending to this Court the issue of the incompatibility of the mandate of the MP and former Foreign Minister, Olta Xhaçka. An act which was interpreted by the opposition as a "coup against the Constitution and the Constitutional Court".

The Socialists did not give any concrete explanation as to why they did not accept sending the case to the Court, but tried to make interpretations about the two decisions of the Court on this matter. One that had to do with the request of one-fifth of the deputies, where the judgment was requested on the basis of the incompatibility of the mandate of Mrs. Xhaçka, and the other that required the resolution of the conflict between one-tenth of the deputies of the opposition and the Assembly, for the overthrow of the motion of them for sending the case to the Court.

While in the first case the Court decided to suspend the case, in the second case, it assessed that the Parliament had acted in violation by dismissing the request to take the case of Mrs. Xhaçka to the court, as the only competent body for this. "The Constitutional Court assesses that in this particular case, the Assembly should have accepted the petitioner's motion and sent the case for review to this Court so that the aspects claimed as incompatibility of the mandate of deputy Olta Xhaçka were subject to constitutional evaluation, since during constitutional trial, no legal-formal obstacle was verified for the motion to be blocked by the Assembly", the Court stated in its decision.

But despite the fact that they cited this assessment of the Court in the session, the socialists again prevented the sending of the issue of Ms. Xhaçka's mandate. According to them, only in the case of investigative commissions, the Court makes their establishment "mandatory", while in this case "it is the parliament that decides".

According to the opposition, Mrs. Xhaçka is in a conflict of interest, given that her husband, former socialist MP Artan Gaçi, has benefited from the status of a strategic investor for the construction of a hotel on the coast of Dhërmi. Ms. Xhaçka herself stated today that she has not benefited a penny from public funds, and that the status that her husband has benefited from does not predict that something like this will happen. Ms. Xhaçka accused the opposition of using the issue politically, with untruths and slander.

But the chairman of the democratic parliamentary group, Gazmend Bardhi, responded by stating that if Ms. Xhaçka is convinced that she is not in a conflict of interest, she has no reason to fear the Constitutional Court, clarifying that the opposition is only asking that the Court be what it should be. appreciate it.

After the decision of the parliament, Mr. Bardhi spoke of "a black day for Albania and for the parliament. With this decision, the existence of the Constitutional Court has been lost, which was executed by a vote in the parliament. If Xhaçka does not implement a decision of the Constitutional Court, why should ordinary Albanians implement a decision of an ordinary court?".

There is no reaction from the Constitutional Court on the decision taken in the evening by the parliament. Earlier, when asked about the delay of the Xhaçka case by the parliament, the President of the Court, Holta Zaçaj, had stated during an interview for the Voice of America that "it is really an unusual and impossible situation to happen in a democratic state" .

According to her, "the decisions of the Court must be implemented, the decisions of the Court are not equivocal, it is not left to the price of politics to decide how and in what way the decisions should be implemented. Decisions are self-enforcing. Therefore, any action that does not coincide with what was said in the decision of the Constitutional Court, I believe that it is not the right decision or it is not the right action".

The issue of Ms. Xhacka's mandate came back to attention in recent days, also for another fact related to her husband and the hotel construction project in Dhërmi. The Special Court seized over 10,000 square meters of the area 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. For the case, a few weeks ago, the former mayor of Himara, Jorgo Goro, was arrested.