“President, not from politics”

For many people, this is a clear political moment, but the Albanian Helsinki Committee, former Constitutional Judge Vjollca Mecaj, thinks that the Parliament and the President are state structures.

For Mecaj, bringing a party above the state is “partycracy”. On this case, Mrs. Mecaj mentions a deformation.

“An international colleague called ‘a dictatorship with elections’, while I will call it ‘a dictatorship with rotation’, for as long that Albania has no free elections. When you take the right to govern, you do not govern on behalf of the party, because the government belongs to everyone, even to those who haven’t voted you. You can be the leader of the party, but you cannot do what you want as head of the state”, Mecaj declared.

Mr. Mecaj mentions the specifics of the Presidential election, as a proposition of 20 MPs as representatives of the people, and not as representatives of the Parliamentary groups.

Mecaj says that the presidential election is not a matter of a political party, but of all citizens.

She evokes the right of the civil society to be part of this discussion, and she draws the profile of a President with integrity, with judicial and extra-political knowledge.

“In this development phase, it seems difficult that one man who comes from the active political life and who is identified with his political force, one fine day, within 24 hours, only because he became president, he can change is performance and stance. Maybe he will desire it, but it will be difficult for him to do such a thinkg”, Mecaj underlines.

“I will give no name to the profile I just made. There are specialized structures for this, but if asked, we will give names too. But not simply for consuming names”, she added.

In another small apartment, where the Civil Legal Initiative has its offices, Aurela Anastasi is on the same wavelength.

“We are a network. If asked, we will give names with other organizations of the civil society”, Anastasi says.

But Mrs. Anastasi does not exclude the possibility of a political president. All is needed is the Constitutional procedure to be respected, which for him means consensus.

“At least from the judicial point of view, it is legitimated with a procedure that is based on the Constitution. The Constitutional spirit is for consensus, because it represents the President as a very important central institution for keeping the balance of powers and for the unification, demands a wider consensus for his election”, Anastasi underlined.

As regards the challenges for the next president, both civil society ladies agree that the biggest challenge is that with the Justice System.

“The President, being a Chairman of the High Council of Justice has an important role for becoming a mediator between the judicial and other powers, for resolving the balance and independence of each other”, Mecaj declared.

“War against corruption especially in justice, as Chairman of the High Council of Justice, the judicial power”, Anastasi declared.

Both ladies think that the future President will have to keep alive the current cooperation spirit between the majority and opposition, and guard the balance between Constitutional institutions.

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