By: PëllumbNako

Former Director in State Police

Security issues expert

As a lexical term, vetting has had an extreme use in the parlance of all groups in this country, becoming unsurprisingly part of everyday vocabulary of Albanian. The law that supports it, which itself has undergone a lot of commenting, remains less familiar. This is probably because most of the attention has been focused on its product, rather than its contents.

There is no reason for anyone to be unsatisfied at a time when the international factor has assumed an active role in the development and enforcement of this law, beyond the classical boundaries of international assistance. No one is opposing the spirit of vetting and its purpose, despite visible and invisible debates that rage in TV with strong doses of protagonism.

Such protagonist posturing, which seeks to highlight a pro-vetting stance for own side and an anti-vetting stance for the adversary’s side, brings to mind the essence of ancient Greek justice philosophy, “When justice is overdone it moves to the side of the adversary”.

Anyway, the law “On transitory reevaluation of judges and prosecutors in Republic of Albania”, in addition to being a foundation stone of Justice Reform, seems to contain a paradox in its interior. Could tricky local collaborators have slipped something under the gaze of the internationals?

The law “On transitory reevaluation of judges and prosecutors in Republic of Albania” envisages the establishment of three institutions tasked to evaluate the assets, vet the background and assess the professional skills of every judge and prosecutor in the country – the Evaluation Commission, the Appeals College and Public Commissioners.

In order for the process to be efficient, the law contains in its article six 11 points that rule on the criteria that candidates for the three above institutions have to fulfill. The criteria are strict and complete. Maximum guarantees. Exemplary integrity, i.e. just the way things should really be.

Among the 11 criteria envisaged in the 11 points, emerges point “e”, which runs as follows:

“ … has not been a member, collaborator, or favored by State Security before 1990, in accordance with the law “On the right of being informed on documents of former security service of People’s Socialist Republic of Albania”.

According to the law on vetting, the Evaluation Commission will give a judgement based on reports and documents submitted by the High Inspectorate of Declaration and Audit of Assets and Conflict of Interest (HIDAACI), which will carry out an investigation on the Assets of subjects to be reevaluated, the Directorate of Security of Classified Information (DSCI), State Intelligence Service (SIS) and the Internal Affairs and Complaints Service (IACS) within Ministry of Interior, which will vet the subjects to be reevaluated.

In the case of the last two institutions the law envisages the possibility for additional personnel and specifies the required standard: “persons who carry out vetting fulfill the applicable standards on protecting privacy and confidentiality on duty”. Such standards are, as a matter of fact, not specified in article six.

In simpler terms, it results that the operational activity of the three Albanian administration institutions, (HIDAACI, DSCI and IACS) will be to supply with “flour” the three evaluation institutions, so that the latter might keep making “bread”.

In order to make good “bread”, the Evaluation Commission, the Appeals Commission and the Public Commissioners, according to point 6, shall be detached from any influence from the former State Security Service. In the meantime (excluding HIDAACI), the introduction of the above criterion was not seen necessary for DSCI and IACS – the current “flour” suppliers, part of the current administration, which are full of former State Security Service Officers. So, the quality of “flour” suffers and the “bread” is of poor quality.

No one among the public opinion at large would believe that it would be hard for the law to rule that people appointed by DSCI and IACS be also subjected to the criterion of detachment from the former State Security Service, i.e., to enforce point “e” of article 6. Anyone from the public opinion might say that the issue of former State security Service is being exaggerated because too much time has gone since 1990. For that matter, some of these persons could be properly committed in the fulfilment of their duties.

We are not talking here about a witch-hunt but about legal spirit, about the philosophy of minimum requirements in drawing up a law. Examining the issue from a reversed position, if the introduction of the criterion of detachment from the former State Security Service was not seen necessary, there would be no reason whatsoever to introduce point “e” – on detachment - for all the above three vetting institutions.

In the way it is now, the law does not seem to be balanced: either all the actors involved therein, who are to work with each other closely, should be subjected without any exclusion to the criterion of detachment from former State Security influence, or, in view of all the time that has passed since 1990, it would have been better not to introduce this requirement at all. Such a lack of balance in the law would have an impact on results (there should be no rash in making judgements, though), and such results will probably be controversial.