US & EU Ambassadors in Albania – A Tale of Sharks and Fish

Renowned analyst, political and social commentator Fatos Lubonja has lashed out today at the US and EU Ambassadors in Tirana accusing them of being one with the big sharks to go after small fish and producing injustice in the small corrupted Albania.

Op-Ed

by Fatos Lubonja

In one of his latest public appearences, US Ambassador Lu asked: “How can Albania deliver justice for ‘big fish’ when it cannot even arrest Balili? How can Albania be accepted as it is the in the EU?” – (referring to drug baron Klement Balili still running free).

There’s no Albanian who doesn’t know that Balili does not get arrested from the police or the prosecutor, not because the ‘small fish’ of the police do not want, but because they cannot – because he is a bigger fish than them.

Therefore we come back to the old proverb that the ‘bigger fish eats the smaller one”, which implies that the smaller fish needs to run to escape from the sharks.

The proof that this is the sort of game currently being played in Albania, comes from the US Ambassador himself. Note the context: while, as I said that, every Albanian knows that judges and prosecutors are smaller fish than politicians and bandits, the US Ambassador cancels the visas to some judges and prosecutors, but does not anulle them to the wild sharks of our waters, and to the ‘Chief-Shark’ who breaks Albanian laws daily as well as US laws through the $80,000 paid to get a photo op with Obama.

One can call this naevity, but then comes the evidence of the Ambassador’s interference on behalf of Bankers Petroleum which is worth the behavior of a pure shark. There’s no Albanian who doesn’t know that Bankers is committing crimes against the local population in the area and against the whole small territory of Albania.

It is fair to accuse the Prosecutor General who has not investigated, rather closed the case after the Ambassador’s intervention – according to the Prosecutor.

It is also possible that some prosecutor might have asked a bribe from Bankers and that some company administrator might have complained to the Ambassador.

But the crime of Bankers remains there however, it screams just as Edi Rama used to scream when he was in opposition. This is why the Ambassador lacks an alibi for his shark-like behaviour towards the fish, and is not acting as a person who fiercly seeks justice in the shark ridden country of ours.

The response of the US Ambassador is that with his and EU Ambassador Vlahutin’s help, Albania is preparing a specilialized group of fishermen to go after every fish and shark across our waters.

But it seems to me that through such arrogant and selective visa removal behavior (the Ambassador offends anyone with a sense of justice and reminds us of the Trump arrogance in removing visas for muslims in 7 states), through defending interests of Bankers Petroleum against poor Albanian citizens, or even through Vlahutin who goes and buys a €1,6m villa right inside the sharks den, the two are delivering contradictory messages to the fishermen.

Most plausibly, they are giving the signal that they have joined the crowd of the wildest sharks in the country and they working to remove the teeth of some weaker sharks in order to deliver them to the Chief Shark of the country.

And this is not justice. Nor it is hope for justice. Quite the contrary, not only it stimulates our bitter experience that in Albania there two types of justice: one for the fish and one for the sharks, but I also predict that it will produce bigger injustice for the future.

Published in Albanian daily Panorama.