FLASH
Shkruar nga Mero Baze
The opposition should fight for more local power and not for more municipalities. So, Berisha should take away from Rama the excessive powers over municipalities and not the number of municipalities. They do not work for either Rama or Berisha.
Territorial reform in Albania is necessary. The 2014 reform, which planned to have 47 municipalities, led to 61 municipalities without any justified criteria at the last minute, since the Party for Justice and Integration joined and since Idrizi had to justify the vote by giving his opinion.
The main justification for proposing 47 municipalities was the impossible management of a number of communes and municipalities, the lack of human resources and the high administrative costs. All of these are valid, but the reform was limited by the lack of a constitutional majority to make it complete, to change the division of Albania into 12 regions, and to make them four or six, as well as to overcome some artifices in the formation of the current regions.
At that time, the Democratic Party refused to cooperate without any logic, only with the idea that it wanted to appear as an uncooperative opposition. Then years later, whenever they wanted to attack Lulzim Basha, they counted this as a mistake.
Now the time has come that not only in reality but also formally, the leader of the DP is Sali Berisha, the one who prevented the DP from participating in the territorial reform in 2014. And he is opposing it again without political logic.
Politically, the DP is no longer needed by anyone for this reform, since the majority has over 84 votes and is doing it itself. But this is a reform that will serve the country for a long time and the best thing would be for the DP to get involved not by begging, but with its desire to change this reality, even though more and more, it has a driver in the numbers of municipalities it wins.
Further reducing the number of municipalities by equalizing it with the number of districts in the old administrative division of Albania is a logical operation. The DP does not know why it is caught in vain and calls it a scandal that Edi Rama wants to make 30 municipalities. In fact, even lower than 30 would be better.
The DP has a more important battleground ahead than the number of municipalities. It should join this process under the banner of municipal decentralization and not under the banner of municipal numbers. The numbers are the same for everyone, the competencies of the municipalities make the difference between the concentration of power in the hands of the central government.
The opposition should fight for more local power and not for more municipalities. So, Berisha should take away from Rama the excessive powers over municipalities and not the number of municipalities. They do not work for either Rama or Berisha.
To maintain, for example, the Municipality of Libohova with half a village and several abandoned villages of Zagoria, you are maintaining an institution that needs more people in the offices than there are residents around it. To maintain municipalities like Selenica, Konispoli or Hasi on their own is foolish because you are maintaining a building that needs legal, urban planning and service offices, with as many employees as you cannot find in those territories.
But on the other hand, municipalities in Albania are financially dead institutions due to the lack of decentralization, their lack of financial independence and competences in territorial administration.
The DP, as a right-wing party, since it continues to call itself such, should make decentralization the cause of the battle and not territorial organization. It is a bureaucratic formality. The municipalities of Albania today are without any competence. Basic municipal services such as water, electricity or garbage are the competence of the central government. The taxes of businesses that develop in the territory are collected by the central government. Small businesses that can collect taxes from the municipality are tax-free at all. The only taxes that the municipality collects are property taxes, and in those areas where there is tourism, also the city tax on hotels, which is very informal.
Municipalities have practically become units financed by the central government. They can no longer even issue building permits, as they must apply to the Territorial Development Agency in Tirana. They have the authority to issue permits for chicken coops or cowsheds, but not for large areas.
On the other hand, education, health and industry in the area are also controlled by the central government. Municipalities are only responsible for maintaining schools and health centers, but have no power over their staff and efficiency.
In this perspective, the opposition has a good chance to condition the government for involvement in a deep reform, up to the touch of the Constitution for the new territorial organization of the country, by conditioning it with something essential and not with nonsense like “OSCE to be a supervisor” or “Council of Europe Authority”. The OSCE is an NGO of less and less importance in Albania, thanks to the battles it has had with the DP, while the Local Government Authority in the Council of Europe can be a good ally in the decentralization of local government, but not in territorial ideas.
Therefore, if the opposition is to take this problem seriously, it must condition it with serious things. There is no need to wash away the sin, because Edi Rama has 87 votes and if he needs 94 more. The task is to create some trace and opposition in this country, besides the traces of Molotov.
Lini një Përgjigje