DUI accuses VLEN of undermining fair and adequate representation

At a press conference, Arbër Ademi of DUI stated that VLEN has damaged the fair and adequate representation of Albanians, even though, according to him, this political force had sought the votes of Albanians with the pledge that it would raise this representation to a higher level.

Ademi said it had been promised that Albanians would be represented by at least 31.5% in state institutions, but according to him, after two years in power, the outcome has been completely the opposite. “They promised progress, they brought setbacks. They promised change, they brought disappointment. They promised a political revolution, they brought political regression,” he said.

According to Ademi, the developments were not accidental, but part of a political scenario that had been announced, approved, and implemented step by step. He recalled that the first blow to Albanian representation came in the very first week after the formation of this government without ethnic legitimacy.

He stressed that through changes in the methodology for public sector employees, Albanians were statistically reduced from 29.5% to 24.3%. According to him, this was the first signal showing that VLEN’s promises did not match reality at all.

Ademi went on to say that the second blow then came, which according to him was the abolition of the Balancer mechanism. He underlined that this was no coincidence because, according to him, it was a promise made by VMRO-DPMNE in its pre-election program, which was later also included in the Government Program, a program that VLEN, according to him, voted for and supported without any reservations.

Furthermore, Ademi said that the Constitutional Court, which he described as an institution acting in service of the political agenda of this majority, abolished the Balancer.

According to him, after the removal of the Balancer, what he said is now seen every day began immediately: the institutional exclusion of Albanians from employment in the state administration. He declared that citizens are facing job postings in which the number of Albanians hired is zero.

“This is the truth. From the promise of 31.5%, we ended up with job postings with 0% Albanians,” Ademi said, adding that instead of restoring a stronger protective mechanism, VLEN has brought forward a draft law that, according to him, does not protect fair and adequate representation.

He claimed that this law, on the contrary, is built on the concept that has for years been promoted by the nationalist doctrine and Karakamisheva: quality, not ethnicity, respectively the principle of “quality” instead of ethnic representation, thereby undermining one of the most important achievements of the Ohrid Agreement.

Ademi added that this draft law does not provide for ethnic quotas, legal sanctions, or even the identification of ethnicity by institutions for candidates. According to him, there is no guarantee whatsoever and for this reason this draft law not only fails to strengthen fair and adequate representation, but destroys it.

In the end, he said that VLEN’s leaders, in order to cover up this failure, claim they have carried out 2,500 hirings and promotions. “The question is very simple: Where are these 2,500 hirings? In which institutions? In which job postings? Because the official statistics do not support this claim,” Ademi said.