Democracy in Albania didn’t mark any progress during 2017. Every step forward was devaluated by a step back.
The Freedom House Report ranks our country once again among the democracies in transition and hybrid regimes, although there was a slight progress, thanks to the recent elections.
The summary made by the Voice of America shows that the progress with the reduction of cannabis production was dimmed by doubts that the Interior Minister was tied to Albanian-Italian drug traffic.
The same goes for the fight against corruption, which were dimmed by the appointing of Ilir Meta as President, who is seen by many citizens and a symbol of corruption, and after the Parliament appointed the Provisory General Prosecutor with a simple majority.
The June 25th elections for Freedom House marked progress because the government offered wide guarantees for the opposition. However, the political blockage of the opposition during the first four months put the electoral process in danger.
The Parliamentary boycott from the Democratic Party during the first months of 2017 has halted the Electoral reform that was recommended by the OSCE ODIHR, and problems continued when the opposition refused to appoint their representatives at the CEC. This boycott damaged the judicial reform with those delays.
The report underlines that media outlets keep suffering from auto-censorship and close ties between politics, business and media.
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