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The Balluku Case: When Rama Chooses Corruption Over Europe!

2025-12-19 17:40:43 / EDITORIAL NGA GENTIAN GABA

The Belinda Balluku case is not simply a criminal episode in SPAK's files.

It is the purest moment when the mask of the “justice reformer” falls from Edi Rama’s face and the true face of a prime minister who is willing to undermine the rule of law, hinder European integration and protect a system of corruption appears, just so that his power can survive a little longer.
SPAK is not asking for the lifting of the immunity of a peripheral MP. It is asking for authorization to arrest the deputy prime minister and minister of infrastructure, the government’s number two, the man who has had tenders, concessions and contracts worth hundreds of millions of euros in his hands, where we are dealing with an “administrative error”, but with an entire model of governance. Even more seriously, SPAK says that Belinda Balluku, while under investigation and in office, exerted pressure on a subordinate, a witness in the case. So, the investigation does not only affect the past, but the integrity of the process itself in real time. This is why the Special Prosecution Office is requesting stronger security measures, not to upset the "guarantors" of the counters who are part of the feast of tenders that go to the media, but as a protection of evidence, witnesses and the truth.
In any normal country, at this point the minister would have resigned, the government would have distanced itself and the prime minister would have chosen to save the morale of the state, not the deputy prime minister's chair.

In Edi Rama's Albania, the opposite is happening. With an offensive against justice, with the suspension decision in the Constitutional Court, with complaints that the judiciary is "interfering in the affairs of the executive" and the mobilization of the parliamentary majority to erect a political wall between SPAK and Balluku's office. Which is in fact Rama's anteroom.
Here it becomes clear what is happening, since the prime minister is not simply protecting a minister, but is protecting the architecture of his power. Because if Balluku falls, the big question comes: who has benefited politically from this system? Who has tolerated, encouraged, signed and protected it?
And now the answer is becoming clearer every hour.
But the consequences are not only internal. This blocking behavior of the government directly hits chapters 23 and 24 of the negotiations, "Judiciary and fundamental rights", "Justice, freedom and security". The European Union has made it clear that progress in these chapters determines the pace of the entire integration process. SPAK and the special courts have been praised as positive examples in the fight against high-level corruption. What message does a prime minister send who, instead of supporting investigations into the government's number two, does everything to block them?
So the Balluku case is the test where Rama is consciously failing. Instead of saying "justice has its say", he is saying "83 mandates have its say". And when the parliamentary majority is put in front of SPAK, it is not SPAK that challenges the state, but it is the government that challenges Europe, the citizens and the very idea of the rule of law.
And when power becomes an obstacle to justice and integration, the problem is no longer just SPAK or Brussels, but of Albanians. Europe has helped us in building institutions, but it does not come to make the state by force, nor justice by grace; If the majority in the Assembly decides to confront the law, then it is the social majority that must confront this political majority. If the government chooses to protect corruption, the citizens must choose to protect their future. At this point, the question is no longer what Edi Rama does with 83 mandates, but what Albanians are ready to do to avoid leaving the country hostage to a government that is afraid of Europe because it is afraid of justice./ Alfapress.al

Happening now...

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The USB with 16 thousand pages of evidence for Balluk, the condition that the head of SPAK, Klodian Braho, set for the deputies. He also rejected Pelesh's suggestion

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Nga Gentian Gaba 17:40 EDITORIAL