Analysis: Justice from the murdered judge to the president of the Supreme Court of Kosovo

2025-10-24 16:55:00, Opinione Luan Rama

Analysis: Justice from the murdered judge to the president of the Supreme Court

I still can't understand how Fatmir Xhafaj, and with him Ulsi Manja, managed to endure without expelling the President of the High Judicial Council (KLGJ) from the courtroom, who, just a few days after Judge Astrit Kalaja was murdered in the courtroom at the solemn moment of announcing the decision in the Name of the Republic, in the most cynical way possible, when he should have brought the entire Assembly of the Republic to its feet about the scandalous state of working conditions and safety at the Court of Appeal in Tirana, covered up to the deputies stories of accidents at work, as if the late judge slipped on the court steps and accidentally lost his life!

Although I do not know this labor law professor closely, I do not want to think that he deliberately chose to find parallels between the criminal murder in the line of duty of the late judge Astrit Kalaja and the loss of his father from an accident at work. This would be beyond any norm of human feeling and humiliating for the murdered judge.

But the way the President of the Supreme Court spoke before the deputies, his professionally lame and intellectually deficient reasoning, sadly mistaken in the morphological and syntactic structure of the sentences, made his appearance before the committees of the Assembly of the Republic ridiculous for him and insulting for the deputies.

The assassin's bullets in the courtroom took the judge's life.

But, along with the judge, the murderer "killed" the justice system itself.

Paradoxically, the president of the Supreme Court, despite everything he said in his report to the deputies, proved to us that he understood nothing, absolutely nothing, about the serious criminal incident. Otherwise, he would not be rambling on about the loss of life from accidents at work.

The murderer of the pedagogue president of the KLGJ could have killed the late Astrit Kalaja whenever and wherever he wanted.

He could have killed him as soon as he left the courthouse or on the street while he was riding his bike home. He could have killed him near the building where he lived or while he was walking with his wife around his house in the evenings.

But he, the murderer, chose to kill inside the court, right in the courtroom, Mr. President of the Supreme Court of Justice, because along with the bullets that took the judge's life, he also wanted to transmit a message; the message of "bullets" on the court and the judges of the justice system!

The murder of Judge Astrit Kalaja is an act of terror in the courtroom, it is a murder committed in the line of duty. To treat this serious criminal event as an ordinary accident at work and to express before the deputies as the President of the Supreme Judicial Council expressed, I quote: "Human destinies go hand in hand with institutional destinies, due to the fact that years ago I also lost my father in an accident at work... and here it happens that you are at the head of the High Judicial Council and have such a repetition", means to be completely, completely out of the blue and to have no idea how an accident at work differs from the crime of murder in the line of duty!

The lack of a detailed analysis and maximum responsibility for the event, which was not reflected in the report of the President of the Supreme Court of Justice to the deputies, the reasons why the Tirana Court of Appeal does not meet even the minimum conditions to guarantee security and a normal working environment, or the lack of reflection on the erroneous judicial map and the damage it has caused to the system, trial deadlines, access to justice, etc., are real evidence of the level of institutions that created justice reforms.

Therefore, if I expressed at the beginning of these lines that I cannot understand how Fatmir Xhafaj, and with him Ulsi Manja, managed to endure without expelling the President of the Supreme Court from the hall, I do not mean this approach in a metaphorical sense.

I mean it in the real sense.

Leaders who do not understand the responsibility of the task they perform, who do not take the information or accountability process in the Assembly of the Republic seriously, or who go there unprepared and are forced to improvise meaningless sentences, should be fired.

They have compromised the justice reform and pitted the system against the citizen. The situation is at scandalous levels, and trust in the system is in alarming decline.

It is enough to bring to attention the thousands of comments from ordinary citizens that flooded social networks after the murder of the late Astrit Kalaja, to understand the justice that judicial reforms have produced.

The Supreme Court or the Supreme People's Court, the government or the Assembly can continue to be satisfied with the successes of the justice reform. The truth is for the taking and for the black face. To recognize this truth, it is enough to look at justice from the murdered judge to the President of the Supreme Court.

All the system offers, even though nine years have passed since the justice reform began, is citizens' distrust and uncertainty in justice, chaos and lack of inter-institutional interaction and cooperation, and above all, the lack of responsibility to reflect.

(In the video, an excerpt from the speech of the President of the Supreme Court of Justice before the deputies in the Assembly of the Republic!)