The Mandates and Regulations Council postponed for the second time on Friday the decision on the opposition’s request for the incompatibility of the mandate of MP and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Olta Xhacka.
Companies owned by Xhacka’s husband, former PS MP Artan Gaci are reported to have benefitted from the public purse and public goods. This came about through the law on strategic investments that sees ‘strategic investors’ benefit from the right to develop on highly valuable land such as sea shores and other coastal areas.
Any tourism project that invests more than EUR 5 million and employs more than 80 people can benefit from the designation. The government is then obliged to provide the projects with electricity supply, drinking water, sewage, wastewater treatment, and road infrastructure.
The law has been widely criticised for favouring a handful of individuals and their coastal investment and an investigation by BIRN found that several beneficiaries had very close links to Xhacka.
According to the opposition, this is an open violation of Article 70, point 3 of the Constitution, which states that “deputies cannot carry out any profitable activity that originates from the property of the state or local government, nor can they acquire their property.”
Although they admitted that the Council did not have the competence to interpret the incompatibility, as that remains the exclusive right of the Constitutional Court, it did not stop them from debating the matter at length.
MP from the Democratic Party Gazmend Bardhi quoted the relevant legislation on conflict of interest including decisions of the Constitutional Court on similar matters.
According to him, “the decision of the government to give the coast for use has forced the municipality of Himare to enter into a contract with the minister herself, since she, as a wife, is a 50% shareholder in her husband’s company”.
But the Socialist members in the council described the request as not based on the Constitution and that it did not contain the formal elements to send it to the Constitutional Court.
Taulant Balla, the socialist’s chief whip asked Bardhi to prove Xhaçka’s benefit from public money. “Prove to me with facts that he received even one penny,” he said.
“Profits are not only related to currencies,” Bardhi replied, adding that the Constitution makes it clear when it says “profitable activity”. “Aren’t the seashores public property that you can take advantage of?” Bardhi added.
Prime Minister Edi Rama appeared in a press conference at the Prime Minister’s Office alongside Xhacka at the same time as the council meeting. Rama defended the decisions signed by himself in the capacity of the chairman of the Strategic Investments Committee in favour of Gaci and called the granting of the strategic investor status correct.
“All along the coastline, there are thousands and thousands of entities that take advantage of a part of the beach as a result of having private property, one of these thousands is the entity in question. What to do in this case; was he told that since he is the minister’s husband, he should not use the beach in front of private property?!” Rama said.
Xhacka said she was confident that the institutions would make the right decision for her mandate and said that she had not benefited from any centimetre of public land.
Two weeks ago, fourteen Democratic Party deputies filed a motion to start the constitutional mechanism to strip Xhacka of her mandate following a scandal that saw her husband benefit from the government’s strategic investment scheme.
The Opposition then tried to set up an investigating committee but the PS majority voted against it. Now, the PD has filed to remove her mandate based on several constitutional articles they say are violated.
These include those pertaining to deputies and spouses benefitting from public property and conflicts of interest.
But the press conference sparked controversy for another reason. A2 Media journalist Klevin Muka asked Rama about the ministerial code of ethics and whether the situation with Xhacka and her husband was compliant. Rama replied that he should be reeducated and banned him from press conferences for three months.
While Muka’s question has been criticised by some, including journalist Fatjona Medini, for not being a real question and being formulated poorly, this is not the first time Rama has banned journalists from press conferences for asking difficult questions, or said they should be re-educated.
Rama then took to Twitter to condemn the ethics of the journalist, without mentioning him by name.
“We have withdrawn from the attempt to legally regulate the freedom of defamation and insult, which in the age of social networks has taken on catastrophic proportions! We did it neither out of fear nor pressure, but as a constructive reaction to the demand of the media community for self-regulation,” he wrote.
He then asked, “where is the self-regulation? We will wait without hope that it will come, but in the meantime, it is not going to happen to legitimise the freedom to violate ethical norms in my presence.”
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