Anti corruption is freedom - Panorama

Anti corruption is freedom - Panorama

By Andrea Stefani

The ever increasing divorce between the combat against corruption and the right of institutions; the transference of this combat into a cause that is becoming more and more practical, and what is more, the transference of this combat into a cause of a single leader like Berisha, the ceaseless attempt to destroy the system of the independent institutions in the name of ridding the institutions of the crime and corruption, are the main source of discrepancy between the civic reaction called “Civil Action” and the government’s anti corruption strategy. Organized with the slogans about the re-establishment of the justice and the rule of law, the authoritarian practices that the majority insists to follow have put the freedom of the institutions at risk. The government’s anti corruption strategy which was supposed to be a attempt to re-establish justice runs counter the idea of freedom and reality achieved during these 16 years of transition. But this is a very significant controversy that leads you to understand that the government’s combat against corruption is after all a hypocrisy that hides behind itself the envy to rule. By threatening the freedom this strategy becomes threatening to the justice as well because the justice is the unique product of the democracy. The justice and the freedom are inseparable in a democratic state.   
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Edmund Burke was one of the first philosophers to interchangeably define justice as freedom and vice versa. About 200 years ago he defined the democracy as a position of the things in which the freedom is ensured by the equity of restrictions, as a constitution of things in which the freedom of no one can not find the tools to violate the freedom of even a single person. According to Burke this Freedom is a second name to Justice that is found in the enforced laws and is controlled by well constructed institutions. This organic relationship between the justice and freedom and vice versa that makes them the creations of the same material leads you to understand that corruption and crime can be fought only by empowering the freedom and not by restricting it.
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The concept of the freedom as a guaranteed justice by independent institutions is an evidence against the organic statement of the government’s anti corruption strategy. The more this anti corruption strategy threatens the independence of the institutions the less it fights the corruption because it is common knowledge that the justice is achieved through system of the institutions and not by one party or one leader.
The liberators become invaders of the freedom as long as the freedom is not controlled by the institutions but it is a prerogative of one party and one leader.  
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The representatives of the Civil Action are subject to anathema with the pretence that the slam for authoritarian tendencies is personalized only to Berisha. As a matter of fact it is quite the opposite. It is Berisha and his followers that in order for them to impinge on the institutions personalized the attacks on the institutions. Thus, they discredit the prosecutor’s office by accusing them as incompetent in combating the crime. It is an accusation that runs counter the facts and with the last achievements in the combat against organized crime that would have not been fulfilled without the role of the prosecutor’s office.

The greatest drawback of Berisha’s attack on the Prosecutor’s office is exactly the fact that these attacks are undertaken at the very moment that the Prosecutor’s Office is doing its best by being more active than ever in the combat against crime. Berisha performs a lot of maneuvers to hide this contradiction. In his reports for the international representatives in which he had to mention his successes in the combat against crime he did not mention the Prosecutor’s Office but the “agency of the combat against crime”. But it is evident that Berisha does not express his concern in the real combat against crime but in the dismissal of the head of the Prosecutor’s Office so that later he could “reform” that office by appointing “independent” loyalists. It is a hidden strategy but not unfamiliar, that by threatening the freedom and the independence of this institution another threat is exercised to the justice, thus, the threat to the freedom of the citizens.
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In the meantime, the hostility demonstrated towards institutions’ decisions that run counter Berisha’s plans for the captures of the institutions, the hostility demonstrated towards the critiques and the protests of the Civil Action, the hostility towards the opposition that Berisha craftily is announcing in his corrupted declarations are clear alarming indicators of a authoritarian nature that run counter not only the opinions that are different from his own.

By being hostile towards the freedom of critique and political freedom of the institutions that is entitled by law, by allegedly accuse the individuals and institutions (even the President of the Republic) of being corrupt and criminals, Berisha”s authoritarianism and all his ardent followers display hostile tones against justice. The belief that the authoritarianism is the remedy to fight corruption and crime is totally wrong and anti- democratic because the authoritarianism is a hint to absolute power and it is common knowledge that the absolute power corrupts in the most absolute way possible. Therefore, Berisha’s triumph of the authoritarianism over “corruption” would be the triumph of the corruption over democracy.