Tirana, Albania | Tirana Echo – The Albanian Parliament has decided to postpone voting on the preliminary ‘Vetting’ structures of its justice system for another week amid opposition boycott and very few applicants qualified to fill the vacancies.
At the request of the Socialist party the 81 majority MPs present voted to postpone the creation of the Ad-Hoc committee which is to look at the current names brought forward and return the list to the Ombudsman who will give another week to fresh applicants to fill up the list.
Parliament was expected to set up an Ad-Hoc committee which would have approved the names to go forward and fill the first structures of the vetting process which will start looking at all judges and prosecutors of Albania.
The country suffers from a chronic corrupt justice system and the European Union and the United States have put on pressure on its politicians to reform the highly corrupt justice system.
Amid opposition boycott and very few applicants for the vetting structures, the Parliament had no choice but to postpone the process and return the list to the Ombudsman, in charge of the application process.
Only 21 names were brought to parliament to fill up 28 vacancies, after an international monitoring group had disqualified 8 names from the first applicant list.
“We should give another 7 days to all those who wish to apply in order to guarantee a fair process and to grant equal opportunities to all those 70 people selected by the Ombudsman previously but who were moved on to List B due to lack of proper paperwork. We should give them time to complete the needed paperwork and they should all apply in the next 7 days” – said SP parliamentary group chair Gramoz Ruçi.
The decision comes as a blow to the EU and US officials who were hoping for a more inclusive and positive process.
Last week, the EU High Representative Federica Mogherini said in Tirana that if the ‘Vetting’ process starts and justice reform is implemented, the European Union would open accession talks for membership with Albania.
The opposition democrats have staged a non-stop protest in front of the PM office and have entered a parliamentary boycott, blocking all legislative activity around the vetting process.
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