Freedom Party Secretary-General Tedi Blushi became embroiled in a heated parliamentary debate with Prime Minister Edi Rama. He said citizens’ concerns were not related to magistrates’ high salaries, but to the €16 billion that, according to him, fails to enter the state budget over a single term in office.
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Blushi claimed that the clash with the justice system had been deliberately created by the head of government to bring the system under his control and divert attention from ongoing corruption scandals, as well as from the country’s regionally low level of revenue collection.
According to him, the amount missing from the budget would make it possible to significantly increase salaries and pensions, as well as provide more funding for agriculture, healthcare and education.
In his statement, Blushi said anyone who thought Edi Rama would return to Albania as a “nun” after spending the night with Vangjel Tavo on Mount Athos, where women are not allowed, had been gravely mistaken.
He said that not even his stay at the Mount Athos monastery, a place where, according to him, miracles happen, had managed to change the prime minister. Blushi added that it appeared even God had given up on Rama because changing him was impossible.
Referring to the language used by the prime minister, Blushi said Rama began his speech with the words “scumbag” and “animal,” alongside, according to him, many other absurdities. For this reason, he said that even God had abandoned the effort to set him on the right path.
Blushi suggested that the monks of Mount Athos recount their icons to check whether any were missing. Referring to the late Fatos Nano, he claimed that Edi Rama had begun his career as a seller of stolen icons and was ending it where he had started, returning, as he put it, to his old trade as an icon thief.
Turning to the debate over magistrates’ salaries, Blushi described it as a premeditated conflict instigated by Edi Rama, whom he called the “chief speculator” and “chief kleptocrat.” According to him, the prime minister has all institutions by the throat, and his concern is not that prosecutors and judges receive the highest salaries in the region, since Rama himself is also the highest-paid prime minister in the region.
He claimed that the real objective was the complete subjugation of the judicial system and the elimination of what little independence, according to him, the justice system still has. Blushi added that through this deliberately created clash, Rama was seeking to divert attention from the main problems facing Albanians.
According to Blushi, the main issue for citizens is not the salaries of prosecutors and judges, but the fact that Albania ranks last in the region for revenue collected as a share of Gross Domestic Product.
He asked how Albania could rank last in the region, with collected revenue at 28.3% of GDP, while Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite emerging from an interethnic armed conflict, collects 42.5%, and Montenegro reaches 40.3%. The answer, according to him, is theft.
Blushi said the state budget was missing at least €4 billion every year, or €16 billion over a single term in office. According to him, that money would be enough to significantly increase the minimum and average wages, as well as urban and rural pensions.
He added that this amount could be used to increase funding for agriculture, a sector from which, according to him, even European Union aid is stolen, including IPARD funds. According to Blushi, it would also allow for greater funding for healthcare and education.
Recalling that Rama had urged them not to make baseless claims about the €40 million, €50 million or hundreds of millions of euros that the opposition alleges he has stolen, Blushi asked the prime minister a specific question: Where is “Gysi’s winery,” and where has the €3 million wine cellar been hidden?
He said four wine cellars would equal the amount needed to increase judges’ salaries.
Regarding the finance minister’s concern that SPAK had come knocking on his door, Blushi said the minister should understand that it was, in fact, Edi Rama who was knocking in order to have him arrested and pin the conflict with the judiciary on him.
According to Blushi, the finance minister, whom he called Belinda’s appointee, should know that after Besfort, whom Rama dismissed as interior minister, his turn was now approaching.
He also responded to one of Edi Rama’s MPs, whom he described as one of those who blindly vote for unconstitutional laws late at night. Referring to the MP’s statement that the state budget cannot be touched except by people authorized by law, Blushi said the “two-meter-tall thief” was right there, reaching into the budget in violation of the law.
He then asked whether Belinda Balluku and Ron Yeffet had reached into the budget, as well as who had approved what he called the “KAYO mafia scheme.” Blushi also raised the question of whether KAYO constituted a constitutional coup and a mechanism for stealing from the state budget.
According to him, that is where the millions needed to increase judges’ salaries can be found. Blushi also demanded to know why Parliament had never held a debate on increasing the salaries, pensions and incomes of all Albanians.
He said the public debate had for days remained focused on judges’ salaries, as though this were Albania’s main problem.
Responding to Rama’s demand that the discussion be based on facts, Blushi asked whether the departure of more than 1 million Albanians from the country over the past 13 years was not a fact. According to him, this emigration was the result of policies he described as criminal, pursued by Edi Rama to plunder tax revenues and extinguish hope.
Blushi addressed Rama as the “head of the organization” and asked him to explain to Albanians why, contrary to colleague Braçe’s claim that this could never happen, he had reached into the budget and was stealing the funds of the poorest country on the continent.
He asked why, according to him, the theft from Europe’s poorest people, who have the most miserable salaries and pensions, continued, and why the state budget was missing at least €4 billion every year.
Blushi also demanded an answer as to why, according to him, not a single inch of land had been left unsold or unstolen. He said that if Rama did not want to answer the opposition, he should explain why he did not dare respond to Arben Ahmetaj, his former right-hand man, who claims to know the prime minister better and more closely than the opposition does.
He also demanded explanations regarding Ron Yeffet, referring to the claim that he controlled not only the Ministry of Defense but also the Ministry of Economy.
Blushi asked whether it was a fact that KAYO, together with its four private subsidiary companies, was plundering the state budget by removing constitutional oversight of public funds. He again asked whether “Gysi’s winery” had disappeared and still could not be found.
He asked Rama to explain to citizens why they receive the lowest salaries in the region and the most miserable pensions. He also demanded an answer to the claim that coastal residents were having their land taken away and that the coastline was being covered with concrete every day by resorts that he linked to crime and drugs.
Blushi asked why, according to him, no public asset had been spared from plunder, including land, forests and mines. He accused the government of not only underfunding agriculture but also stealing European aid, while demanding to know why Albania could not compare even with North Macedonia in this sector.
He went on to ask why Rama did not tell Albanians that, even after 13 years in power, he had failed to resolve the issue of the drinking water supply.
Blushi called on the prime minister to provide explanations and abandon what he described as worn-out quips. He said Rama no longer had a vision and had also run out of ideas.
Regarding what he called Rama’s faithful presence every Friday, Blushi said the prime minister’s dirty fingernails around the throat of an Albanian emigrant as they descended the airplane stairs in Naples were enough to understand, according to him, the extent of Rama’s hypocrisy.
In conclusion, he said he hoped the monks on Mount Athos had chanted something good into Rama’s ear. However, according to Blushi, the fact that the prime minister did not change even after those chants showed that God, too, had given up on him.
