From Genc Burimi

A constitutional coup is being played out today in the Laws and Human Rights Committee, with the focus on the Constitutional Court's decision on magistrates' salaries. The government is coming up with a draft law that ignores the guardian of the Constitution. The Minister of Justice, Gogu, without batting an eyelash or tongue, declares in a martial tone, as if he were a general, that Parliament decides on salaries in the judiciary, not the Constitutional Court.

He horribly and consciously violates Article 132 of the Constitution: “The decisions of the Constitutional Court are final.” The same military tone was adopted by the socialist deputy Bido, referring to this file before the Human Rights Commission with the words: the Sovereign decides, that is, “the socialist majority” and not the Constitutional Court.

The Constitutional Court has just ruled as non-negotiable two principles in its decision, in the conflict over magistrates' salaries:

The salary increase for magistrates should be at least 44% (it seems to take into account the salary increases in the Albanian Administration for a decade).

The legal reference for the salary of magistrates cannot be the salary of the President of the Republic. (The 2016 justice reform sanctioned the highest salary in the senior public administration as a reference)
The Minister of Justice, Gogu, comes to the parliamentary committee to defend a bill that scandalously rejects these two decisions.

Instead of the minimum 44% salary increase that the Constitutional Court has set, the majority does not “release” more than 6%. Instead of removing the President’s salary as a reference for magistrates’ salaries, the majority insists on this salary reference, ignoring what it itself had imposed with cards in 2016, when it used salaries in the Administration as a reference.

The very presentation of such a draft law, without reaching its approval with the SP cards on September 17 in the plenary session, constitutes elements of a constitutional coup. If the Parliament today, by abusing the term "in the name of the Sovereign", puts itself above the Constitution and its guardian, which is the Constitutional Court, what happens tomorrow, when an ominous parliament can decide "in the name of the Sovereign", the overthrow of pluralism in Albania and the proclamation of Edi Rama as emperor.

The opposition must urgently request a statement from the European Union representation in Tirana, as the great family of democracies that Albania seeks to join. The question: is the Albanian parliament acting in accordance with the rules of the rule of law? Is there even a single country in the EU where the decisions of the Constitutional Court are not implemented? Albanians trust in Europe, let it not be silent, let it tell them the truth!